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BURNSVILLE TO BEELOG, MT. MITCHELL TO MICAVILLE: EXPLORING YANCEY COUNTY NC OFFERS RICH REWARDS

Significant scenery, historic hostelries, world class glass-and berry baskets fashioned from the bark of tulip poplars. Yancey County is home to all these and more. Log homes hug hillsides. White frame farmhouses and weathered 'baccer' barns preside over fertile valleys. Around every curve, across every expanse of field and forest, Yancey County appeals to the eye, the ear, the palate (and the palette).

Centrally located in the Western North Carolina Mountains midway between Boone and Asheville, Yancey County is home to Mt. Mitchell (at 6,684 feet, the highest mountain east of the Mississippi) and 18 additional peaks with elevations exceeding 6,300 feet. Ridges and valleys carved over eons by the South Toe and Cane rivers and their tributaries alternately reveal and conceal a landscape rich in natural and agricultural resources.

Eight hundred years ago, the Cherokee tended cornfields on the banks of the Cane and hunted elk amid the mountains' towering virgin forests. The elk and Cherokee villages are gone, but corn still grows in the rich bottomlands. Christmas tree plantations of Fraser fir-a dominant species of the mountaintops' spruce/fir forests-pattern sloping hillsides. Nurseries propagate pinkshell and flame azalea and Catawba rhododendron that naturally ornament the surrounding mountains' woodlands and balds.

Burnsville, Yancey's county seat, is its only incorporated town, though the back roads are liberally sprinkled with communities with picturesque names-among them Daybook, Egypt, Micaville and Beelog. The town is organized around a central square, and offers a pleasant mix of shops, galleries and restaurants, in addition to a library and town and county government buildings. (The old courthouse is now the town office.)

Burnsville is the kind of town that invites you to park and take a stroll. Just off the square, on West Main St., a Visitor Center that is home to the Yancey County/Burnsville Chamber of Commerce occupies a restored service station. On a hill just above it, the historic McElroy House (c. 1850) is home to the Rush Wray Museum of Yancey County History. The house served as headquarters for the western North Carolina home guard during much of the Civil War.

A copper statue of Capt. Otway Burns, a War of 1812 naval hero, dominates the square itself. Festivals and celebrations-the Mt. Mitchell Crafts Fair the first Friday and Saturday in August, a 4th of July celebration, a summer evening concert series and other special events-take place on and around the square. Biggest event of the year is the Crafts Fair, now in its 50th year, which attracts more than 255 craftspeople and thousands of visitors annually.

The Parkway Playhouse, on the edge of town, offers professional summer theatre musicals, comedies and serious dramas. Two September events- Music in the Mountains Folk Festival, at Patience Mullendore Park/ Campground on the banks of the South Toe, and an Old Timey Days Fall Festival on the Square the last Saturday in September-help Yancey celebrate its musical and rural roots.

Yancey is home to a number of world-renowned craftspeople, like glass artists Rob Levin and Bill Bernstein. Potter Pete McWhirter and his wife Kim carry on a family tradition in a small shop and studio in Celo, in the South Toe Valley.

David Boone's woodcarving studio is tucked in the Cane River Valley at Pensacola. The Boone name has long been associated with Yancey crafts, as multiple generations of blacksmith Boones operated a famous forge in Burnsville in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ninety-year-old Luther Thomas who learned to make brooms and bark baskets as a boy-and attained celebrity as an interview subject and friend of the late Charles Kuralt-has been named a North Carolina State Living Treasure. He can often be found in his daughter Maphra Shehan's shop, Sisters Three and Me, on West Main St.

Toe River Crafts, a coop in Celo, and the galleries in and around Burnsville showcase the best of local and regional crafts.

Yancey's outdoor recreational opportunities run the gamut from hiking, camping and tubing, to fishing, hunting, horseback riding and golf. The towering Black Mountains, with Mt. Mitchell as their centerpiece, provide a magnificent backdrop. If you're seeking an extended away-from-it-all, take an overnight hike on the Appalachian Trail, which roughly follows Yancey's northern border from the Nolichucky River to Big Bald, or explore the network of trails in the Blacks.

Those who prefer to reach their scenery by an easier route can access the Blue Ridge Parkway at Buck Creek Gap-the Parkway traces the county's southern boundary-or explore Yancey's picturesque back roads. Within an easy drive are famous out-of-county attractions from Asheville's Biltmore Estate and NC Arboretum to Grandfather Mountain and Linville Falls. The county offers all types of accommodations-in-town and rural bed-and-breakfasts, secluded mountain cabins, gracious inns, primitive (or not-so-primitive) campsites, a dude ranch and an elegant spa.

For more information about Yancey County, call or write the Yancey/Burnsville Chamber of Commerce at 828-682-7413 (toll free at 800-948-1632), 106 W. Main St., Burnsville, NC 28714, or visit its website at www.yanceychamber.com.