Creating the Land of the Sky: Tourism and Society in Western North Carolina

by Richard Starnes

Book Overview

A sophisticated inquiry into tourism's social and economic power across the South.

In the early 19th century, planter families from South Carolina, Georgia, and eastern North Carolina left their low-country estates during the summer to relocate their households to vacation homes in the mountains of western North Carolina. Those unable to afford the expense of a second home relaxed at the hotels that emerged to meet their needs. This early...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0817356045
• ISBN13: 9780817356040
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Powerful read about change in Western North Carolina

Like natives in many of the most beautiful parts of our country, those in the cloud-laced mountains of Western North Carolina complain about growth and change even though they're the ones who opened the door to it - in this case, development of the region's tourism and second-home economy. In "Creating the Land of the Sky," Richard D. Starnes, a history professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, offers a compelling analysis and history of tourism development in Western North Carolina. With dogged research and an engaging narrative writing style, Starnes traces the history of tourism in the region to the early nineteenth century, when low-country planters fled the "fever season" each summer to the milder climates of the mountain South. "Whole communities took on new characters," Starnes writes, "as mountain towns such as Hendersonville, Flat Rock and Asheville became seasonal centers of southern aristocracy." Starnes' book is packed with insider political tales, such as how the Blue Ridge Parkway got its route, and delightful, sometimes devilish, characters, including many we know well in other contexts. Consider these words that novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote to his mother about Edwin Wiley Grove, the quinine tonic magnate who built the luxurious Grove Park Inn of Asheville: "Grove is a great man because he sells more pills than anyone else," Wolfe wrote, complaining that tourism had changed the culture and values of the city so that wealth, rather than character, determined greatness. "Greater Asheville," Wolfe wrote, "does not mean `100,000 by 1930,' that we are 4 times as civilized as our grandfathers because we go four times as fast in automobiles, because buildings are four times as tall." As a native of the region himself, Starnes' insights are astute and often poignant. But while some of his subjects - such as Harrah's Cherokee Casino, opened in 1997 - seem deserving of criticism for changing mountain culture and morals, Starnes handles them all with the fairness and respect you'd expect from a distinguished historian. "Tourism did bring progress, government aid and new opportunities to western North Carolina," he concludes. "It also created an atmosphere that led to the exploitation of labor, land and culture." Whether you're a native North Carolinian, or a visitor like me (one of the thousands of Floridians who crowd these mountains each summer), I highly recommend Starnes' book to anyone who cares about the majestic "Land of the Sky."

Great book!

Great book by a person in the know. As a past resident of the area it was really interesting learning more about the area.