When a Tree Falls

In 1999 alone, nearly 20 million sightseers drove the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina's most-visited tourist attraction and most scenic road.

Each year, tourists from out of state decide to make the N.C. mountains their home, and repeat visitors to Boone and Blowing Rock witness impressive mansions growing out of mountainsides that 10 years ago were still untouched.

Ironically but predictably, the vistas and clear waters that prove so alluring to vacationers also result in development -- billboards, mountaintop subdivisions, traffic jams, strip malls.

"Growth and development is not a story, it's the story up here, and it burns hotter every day," said Miles Tager, a reporter for Boone's Mountain Times.

Might the very charm of western North Carolina attract such numbers that the quality of life which entices newcomers could be lost forever?

Inevitable and big changes are coming to the N.C. mountains. That much is clear to everyone, conservationist and developer alike.

But the nature of that change is the subject of a raging battle fought for decades in court, in the media and in politics across the state's mountain counties.

In places where any resistance to development exists, it often amounts to the efforts of a few individuals or a patchwork of civic coalitions.

Almost no N.C. regulations of growth in the mountains are on the books.

State leaders have long known that development would someday threaten the touristy ambiance of the N.C. mountains.

In 1973, the year the Coastal Area Management Act ushered in state regulation of growth along the N.C. coast, lawmakers offered a twin proposal, the Mountain Area Management Act for the western part of the state.

But it died in the General Assembly when western opposition proved too great for state oversight of mountain development to become reality.

In 1990, the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research inventoried land-use policies statewide and found little had changed in the mountains. The report stated that, "The mountain region trails the rest of the state in planning for and managing growth, despite a clear economic interest in protecting the beauty of the region for tourism."

Mountain voters to this day remain reluctant to endorse zoning and planning laws that might prevent unsightly sprawl. Only two of North Carolina's mountain counties zoned countywide 10 years ago, and only three do so today. Fourteen counties in the mountains still have no zoning restrictions at all outside the limits of towns.

The debate over what western North Carolina will look like in 20 years defies easy answers when any suggestion of land-use regulation falls prey to a virulent mistrust of government that runs especially deep in the highlands.

Fights over development versus preservation are front-page news in mountain cities, where old traditions of land rights and freedom from government clash with the preservationist values that newcomers bring with them.

Buncombe County is today North Carolina's most populous county without any countywide zoning law.

Buncombe Commissioner David Gantt, a pro-zoning Democrat, said just the word "zoning" is radioactive to a majority of mountain voters. "Zoning is like desegregation was in the late 1950s -- almost a curse word," Gantt said.

From a manila folder, Gantt pulled newspaper clippings that he said demonstrate the fervor of recent zoning debates: a front-page photo of picketers with signs calling Gantt "a communist," and a letter to the editor that said zoning was a "strategy used by Satan."

"We had to have armed guards. We rode in police cars to get to public meetings," Gantt said.

But anti-zoning forces press a compelling issue -- why should retired farmers, counting on the sale of land suddenly worth millions, have that option taken from them by public vote?

Jim Morton, whose family owns Grandfather Mountain, has been active in preserving 2,500 acres around the mountain from the bulldozer's blade. "When you don't own property, it's real nice to say you're against development," Morton said. "But when you own property and pay the taxes, and a good time comes to develop that property, it's tough when people complain about it."

Nathan Ramsey, the Republican chairman of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, won his post in November on an anti-zoning platform and said restricting landowners' right to sell or develop their property is unfair because the land is all that some of his constituents have left.

"I think the major issue is that our incomes are about half that of the Triangle and the Triad areas. But our cost of living is still high," Ramsey said. "You can talk about preserving green space, but when people can't earn a living, what do they do? Sell their land for development."

Outside the cities, the fight for preservation can sometimes be left to a few vocal individuals.

Sixteen-year-old Ashley Cook is one such person. A self-described "liberalist" in a conservative place, Cook remembers the morning in the spring of 1999 when heavy equipment first arrived on the mountainside across from her family's rural Avery County home. "They just showed up one day, and that was the first we knew about it."

Curious, Cook walked across the road and in neighborly fashion asked what was going on.

What she learned has since made headlines statewide. In plain sight of the Appalachian Trail, Belview Mountain was slated to be made a quarry, its granite apparently destined to be trucked away.

As soon as she knew what was happening, Cook began e-mailing and writing letters to Charles Gardner, director of the state's Division of Land Resources, and to Bill Holman, then N.C. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources.

Cook also phoned neighbors and friends with the news, and one of them got Cook in touch with local writer and lawyer Jay Leutze.

As a result of local protests spearheaded by Cook and Leutze, Putnam Mine stands idle today, its future in doubt pending an appeal by the mining company.

Some blasting occurred before operations ceased on Belview Mountain, leaving a gaping scar on the mountainside, but Leutze is optimistic that further damage can be prevented.

Other community activists across the mountain counties are forming coalitions and holding public forums on smart growth in response to a perceived need for voter education on the issue.

John Cooper, owner of the Mast General Store, a tourist mecca in Valle Crucis near Boone, arranged for a pro-planning motivational speaker, Ed McMahon, director of the American Greenways program of the Conservation Fund, to present his smart-growth slide show at a recent Boone meeting. Cooper said about 500 local residents attended, representing all interests in the growth debate and that everyone was deeply impressed with McMahon's warnings.

"Almost anywhere in North Carolina, there are those who want no ordinances," Cooper said. "They just don't view the issue from the common good. Zoning is misunderstood."

Cooper, who moved to Valle Crucis and bought the Mast General Store 21 years ago, says he detects a softening of opposition to planning as the need for it becomes more clear.

He does admit that his county, Watauga, with Appalachian State University and an abundance of wealthy homeowners, is more agreeable to regulation than most areas of the mountains.

Cooper's own preservation efforts have led to alliances with lifelong residents and civic groups in Valle Crucis who purchase property outright or conserve it through easements and tax breaks to conservation-minded landowners.

Still, contradictions abound in this land of patchwork planning.

Cooper's own home sits prominently on the ridge overlooking Valle Crucis, precisely the kind of sight that many pro-zoning activists say they would rather avoid.

"We have kept out the condominiums," says lifelong Valle Crucis farmer Howell Cook, who helped implement a local historical district in efforts to control development. But he knows the pressure to build won't ever relent.

"A lot of this land is now worth more than $30,000 an acre," Howell Cook said. "Heck, I remember when $30,000 would have bought a good bit of Watauga County."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.