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How Waynesville Was Won

Town’s wild past sparks fiction with a happy ending.

In the opening scene of Ron Rash’s acclaimed novel Serena (HarperCollins, 2008), a steam train pulls into the Waynesville station in 1929, depositing Boston timber baroness Serena Pemberton onto the platform from which she’ll launch an all-out assault — on anyone or anything that gets in her way.

As it happens, famed National Parks advocate Horace Kephart happens to be one of those who crosses her path, and the struggle between their competing interests comes to represent the battle for the future of the Great Smokies. Which will it be: a half-million acres of clear-cut wilderness or a crowning jewel in the National Parks system?

Waynesville provides a perfect backdrop for this riveting tale, and although it’s fictional, much of it is based on fact. Rash has a special connection to Waynesville: his ancestor, Robert Love, founded the town in 1809, naming it after a Revolutionary War general under whom he served — “Mad” Anthony Wayne. But the author, who teaches at Western Carolina University, has said that the inspiration for Serena came not from a person but from a piece of furniture: an immense poplar plank table hewn from a single tree.

The 120-foot-long table, seen at Lake Logan Retreat and Conference Center (in nearby Canton), conjured images of the towering forest that once covered the area, and drove Rash to take a closer look at how the forces for and against conservation played out in the region.
Waynesville grew as a commercial hub for farmers, loggers, miners and any others looking for a way to make a living in the wild west of North Carolina. If you needed a doctor, a bank or a tractor, Waynesville was the place to come. But the mountains have always provided something of a natural cap on sprawl. “We are literally surrounded by the Smokies,” says Downtown Waynesville Association President Buffy Phillips Messer. It’s no wonder the mountains continue to play such a strong part in the town’s history and culture.

That close tie to mountain heritage, says Messer, sets Waynesville apart from other regional towns. Nearby Maggie Valley may claim the title “clogging capital of the world,” but Waynesville has managed to translate the area’s cultural traditions into a reputation in all areas of the arts. “I think we have more galleries per capita than the other town in the region,” says Messer. With just over 9,000 year-round residents, that may be true.

The arts and the scenery continue to be cornerstones of Waynesville’s appeal. Some of the many tourists who flock to the Smokies stay on, buy second homes or retire here, bringing new character to the town. There are the Florida transplants who serve Cuban food at Nico’s Café and Mindy’s Bakery, and Argentinean celebrity chef Ricardo Fernandez of Lomo Grill, who lends his name to a line of spicy pasta sauces. Perhaps the biggest contributors to world flavor in Waynesville are the hundreds of folk dancers who descend on the town each summer during Folkmoot, the international dance festival that the town has hosted for more than two decades.

There are the many artists — some drawn to the area by Haywood Community College’s nationally known Professional Crafts Program — who’ve set up shop on Main Street or the Frog Level historic district. And then there are those who fell in love with the landscape and opened bed-and-breakfasts or outdoor-adventure businesses so that others could come and enjoy the wonders of Waynesville, too.
While the population of the town isn’t exactly swelling, there’s a constant influx of outsiders with great ideas for adding something new to that celebrated mountain heritage. And there’s a steady pool of insiders with visions for keeping the town fresh and relevant for tourists and natives alike, chief among them Waynesville’s current and former mayors, Gavin Brown and Henry Foy. Both have been credited with preserving and restoring areas such as Frog Level (which had fallen into decline) while encouraging positive growth. Horace Kephart would have liked that.

You probably already have an inkling how Serena ends: Kephart and the conservationists prevail and the baroness is forced south to ravage the Brazilian rainforests instead. Waynesville eludes the bleak fate of a dying timber town and thrives as an arts and tourist haven, thanks to the glorious scenery Serena was so bent on destroying. For Waynesville, at least, it’s a happy ending that’s anything but fictional.