The Setting

Using your community’s history and arts to attract visitors is sound economic strategy. Moving tourists to and between sites via driving tours is a tried-and-true method. But where did this concept of tying together the odds and ends of an area’s heritage and marketing them as a unit come from? One of the first programs in the nation to recognize and tap into an inherent industry—the past and its rituals—originated in the mountains of North Carolina. HandMade in America, which more or less forged the original heritage trail, is now the grandma of all heritage driving tours. Here, a mature heritage tourism program shares its story.

In the ancient hills and dales of western North Carolina live people who have eked livings from the steep, rocky earth and carried on Native and Old World traditions for centuries. Being rural kept the traditions—crafts, specifically—pure. No second-rate materials, no cutting corners to meet quotas. These are as authentic a bunch of folks as you’re likely to meet anywhere in the country. And so are their crafts, which, while considered art forms today, grew out of necessity in a remote wilderness: pottery, blown glass, wood-working, weaving.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, Western North Carolina felt the drift outward by its home-grown children who sought stronger economic markets in which to make their livings. Difficult terrain, lack of infrastructure, and unimproved road systems prevented many industries from locating to the mountainous region. Of the 23 counties that eventually came under the crafts program, 14 are considered “economically distressed” by the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

Local economic development strategists realized they would need to look inward for resources on which to build. They considered the huge concentration of folk arts and realized they had an existing invisible industry of craftspeople. To organize and promote this inherent industry, strategists formed the nonprofit HandMade in America in 1993. With funding from the North Carolina Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development, HandMade researched the profile of heritage travelers to the region so they would know their target market, then the group applied for and received a three-year organizational development grant from the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. More than 360 citizens participated in a regional planning process to help determine how HandMade could establish western North Carolina as the center of handcrafted objects in the nation.

But getting from recognizing the value of its environmentally friendly industry that employs 740 full-time and 3,300 part-time workers who contribute more than $122 million to the local economy annually, to organizing and marketing it as an economic development tool took some seriously hard work and a whole lot of flying by the seat of the pants.

Becky Anderson, HandMade’s executive director explains. “We set out to find the elusive balance between protecting sacred places and encouraging the growth of tourism.”

HandMade in America developed a system of trails to take visitors down back roads and steep mountain lanes directly to the artisans themselves. To tell tourists the who, why, and where, HandMade published in 1996 a guidebook, The Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina, the first such guide to take visitors onto the private property of artisans.

“My dad started our family business 15 years ago,” explains Brad Dodson of Mud Dabbers Pottery and Crafts of Waynesville and Brevard. “His philosophy is one of being open and sharing his knowledge about his art. He welcomes visitors into the studio and shares with them what he’s doing. This way customers not only get to see the mug or the vase being made, they can take part in the essence of seeing it produced by meeting the artist and talking with him while he’s creating.” Brad, his father, John, and his brother, their mother, and sisters all create pottery and work in the shops. “By joining up with the HandMade group,” continues Brad, “we were able to market more widely than we would have on our own. Their philosophy meshed perfectly with ours and the Heritage Trails book is a great marketing tool.”

The trail concept worked. Statistics prove the viability of this ingenious endeavor. But, as Anderson points out, “You just learn so much every single day. We had no one to copy, no one to emulate to demonstrate the best course of action. And we made mistakes. But we’re smart enough to learn from them and make changes.” Although not fully formed at the outset, the process of establishing the trails provided practical lessons.

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