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

Creating the Land of the Sky: Tourism and Society in Western North Carolina. By Richard D. Starnes (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005. xiv plus 231 pp.).

Each year about twenty million motorists drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the scenic mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The largest city along the Parkway, Asheville, North Carolina, is the center of a tourist region which promotes itself as "The Land of the Sky." As Parkway travelers approach Asheville they come across a beautifully designed modern building made from local timber and rock called the Folk Art Center. Inside they are introduced to mountain culture- or at least to the official version of mountain culture that the coalition of government agencies and local businesses who established the Center want these potential customers to see. Visitors can watch demonstrations by mountain musicians and artisans, buy high-quality Appalachian crafts, and peruse a museum of the finest examples of contemporary mountain artwork. But these tourists encounter a very different portrait of mountain life after they leave the Parkway. A variety of businesses, large and small, try to extract their dollars by selling stereotypical items such as "Hillbilly" joke books, corncob pipes, and little brown moonshine jugs, all designed to play on the outsiders' preconceived notions of Appalachia. Tourism in the North Carolina mountains is contested terrain, both culturally and economically. According to Richard Starnes's new book it always has been.

Although tourism is now the world's largest industry, creating an estimated $3.6 trillion of economic activity annually (according to the World Travel and Tourism Council), historians of the United States have been slow to study its development. Anthropologists, economists, and sociologists have taken the lead in exploring tourism's growing impact on the natural and human environment. Starnes, an Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University, is part of a new wave of historians who borrow heavily from these disciplines to analyze the importance of tourism at the local and regional level. Several years ago he edited Southern Journeys: Tourism, History, and Culture in the Modern South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003). Now he presents his own case study of tourism in and around Asheville from 1800 to the late twentieth century.

According to Starnes tourism began in western North Carolina during the early nineteenth century when low-country planters left their farms in the summer for the cooler breezes of the mountains. By the Civil War the Asheville area already had a reputation as a travel destination, but it lacked the infrastructure and unifying image essential for a successful tourist economy. After the war the mountains' healing springs and reputation for a healthy climate, combined with new railroad construction, brought increasing numbers of visitors. Soon "health tourism" gave way to the more profitable business of catering to the growing middle class of pleasure seekers who came to the mountains to experience the rugged beauty. The romantic appeal of Appalachian culture, which emerged in the American imagination around the turn of the century, also drew visitors to the area. By 1900 mountain leaders were committed to tourism as the basis of their economy much in the same way that other New South regional elites built their communities on coal mining, tobacco farming, and textile manufacturing.

Even after the Great Depression brought the tourist industry crashing down in the 1930s, mountain entrepreneurs held fast to their vision of "The Land of the Sky." They convinced the federal government to invest millions of dollars in tourist-friendly projects such as the Great Smokey Mountain National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. While these massive government programs contributed to the region's post-war success, they also exasperated growing tensions within mountain society. The Great Smokey Mountain National Park brought prosperity to towns near its official Park Entrances but left other mountain communities isolated and burdened with new regulations restricting alternative economic activity. The Blue Ridge Parkway benefitted hotel owners but infuriated mountain farmers who were prevented from driving their commercial vehicles on the new road.

These conflicts were but a few of the numerous tensions that grew out of western North Carolina's commitment to a tourist economy. Loggers and miners fought a losing battle against the tourism lobby that convinced local and national governments to protect the region's national beauty against invasive industries. Mountaineers complained in vain about their stereotypical depiction as backwoods rednecks in promotional materials and advertisements. Long-time residents clashed with developers whose ski resorts and second-home communities drove up taxes and pushed the locals off the land. Tourism also altered the traditional patterns of mountain life and work, especially for African-Americans and women who found both new opportunities and new discrimination in the growing demand for lodging, shopping, and entertainment.

Starnes wisely avoids taking sides on whether tourism represented a successful or failed model of economic development for western North Carolina. But he does take on the theory that mountain tourism represented a form of economic colonialism. "Both natives and newcomers used cultural tourism as a springboard for profit and cultural preservation," Starnes argues. "The use and abuse of mountain culture for tourism development reflects more of class tensions than the insider-outsider dynamic so prominent in scholarly writing on the southern mountains" (p. 183).

Because this book lies at the intersection of so many academic sub-fields it is difficult to catagorize it as "Appalachian history," "economic history," or even "social history." Indeed, Starnes's synthetic approach is one of the book's greatest strengths. But for such a large undertaking the book is surprisingly short. Too frequently Starnes raises an issue or event only to drop it before explaining its full significance. For example, the limited press coverage of a 1906 lynching of a black man who murdered five Asheville citizens is cited as evidence of local newspapers downplaying racial tensions to protect tourism, yet neither the story of the lynching nor the cover-up is ever told. Likewise, the reader is left longing for specific examples of how the conservative Christians who ran faith-based retreats just outside of Asheville found common ground with the entrepreneurs who promoted more worldly attractions downtown. At times the book's overlapping chronological and thematic organization is repetitious and the regional boundaries of "The Land of the Sky" are imprecise and debatable. On the positive side, Starnes's skillful inclusion of women, African Americans, and the Cherokee is commendable and his historiography is excellent.

Creating the Land of the Sky will not be the final word on the history of tourism in the southern Appalachians, but forthcoming studies will be built on its pathbreaking approach. The questions Starnes has raised will define the field for years to come.

Karl E. Campbell

Appalachian State University