Montreat College (pronounced "mon-treet") is a private, Christian college in Montreat, North Carolina. Founded in 1916, Montreat College offers associate, bachelor's, and master's degree programs for traditional and adult students. The college's main campus for four-year traditional students is located in Montreat, North Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina. History In 1897 Congregationalist minister John C. Collins, from New Haven, Connecticut, joined with a number of like-minded associates from other denominations, including evangelist Weston R. Gales, to form the Mountain Retreat Association. "The corporation was not owned by one denomination but it was interdenominational in its makeup without church connection or control. The original Montreat idea has changed, grown and developed into what now is. Its name was derived from the words 'Mountain Retreat.'" The original organization stated its purpose as follows: "…to establish and maintain in the mountain section of North Carolina, a municipality containing assembly grounds for the encouragement of Christian work and living through Christian convention, public worship, missionary work, schools, libraries, orphan homes, manual and trades training and other operations auxiliary and incidental thereto; also a community and health resort with places for dwellings, permanently and temporarily, for health, rest, recreation, Christian work and fellowship, together with whatever may be connected therewith, directly or incidentally." Today the name Montreat is used for at least three different entities including Montreat College. The original Mountain Retreat Association was adapted as a Presbyterian conference center fewer than ten years after its founding. J. R. Howerton of Charlotte, North Carolina, purchased Montreat for use by the Presbyterian Church in the United States (also known informally as the Southern Presbyterian Church). In 1913, Dr. Robert C. Anderson, then president of the Mountain Retreat Association, proposed that the grounds and facilities of the Association be used for a school during the academic year. In 1915, an Ad Interim Committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. reported: "1. We have made a careful examination of the Montreat property, and believe that it could be made suitable for school purposes by installing heating facilities and adding up-to-date school equipment. In this way provision could easily be made for 350 to 400 pupils. 2. We have carefully considered the various schools within the bounds of our General Assembly and under the control of the various Synods and Presbyteries, and we believe that one need