The United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) initiative that when fully commissioned in 2009 will be comprised of 114 climate stations across the U.S. The ultimate goal of USCRN is to provide long time series of homogenous climate observations, particularly for temperature and precipitation. These high-quality observations can be utilized (in concert with data from denser networks) to increase the fidelity of numerous climate monitoring applications, including the placement of real-time observations into a historical perspective, as well as the detection and attribution of present and future climate change. In June 2000, the first two CRN stations were installed near Asheville, NC, which is located in the southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. After months of testing and evaluation, these stations became operational in mid-2001, supplying the first stream of data from the USCRN. The seven years of data collected since that time support an early analysis into trends and variability in temperature and precipitation. In the present investigation, temperature data (maximum, minimum, and mean) from these pioneering stations are analyzed and compared with homogeneity adjusted data from nearby COOP and ASOS stations to determine if data from this reference network may provide differing perspectives on trends and variability in temperature.