Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 22

COUNTRY ROADS

30 Years Ago

in Blue Ridge Country

Upgrades to
Virginia's
artisan center
will improve
interactiveness
and story-telling.

NEW LOOK!

HEARTWOOD
The Southwest Virginia crafts and cuisine center is getting an update.

outhwest Virginia's headquarters for crafts, cuisine and The
Crooked Road: Virginia's Heritage Music Trail shut its doors in January for its first major makeover since
opening in 2011.
It is slated to reopen March 15.
Heartwood: Southwest Virginia's
Artisan Gateway is a barn-shaped information station, event space, restaurant and craft shop off I-81's Exit 14 in
Abingdon. The facility serves 19 counties and four cities. And, after eight
years, it needed an update-with new
exhibits-to reflect major new entities like the Spearhead Trails system,
breweries, outfitters and an explosion
of festivals, many of which are rooted

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

in roots music.
"The creative economy is evolving in southwest Virginia," says Jenna
Wagner, the marketing director for
the Southwest Virginia Cultural Heritage Foundation.
"We're evolving to better serve
southwest Virginia," Wagner says.
"It's really about enhanced storytelling and programming."
Heartwood will retain its size and
shape, Wagner says. Yet new additions
will allow the facility "a lot more opportunities to tell the stories of the
region in some really cool interactive
ways and put special emphasis on our
artists and our musicians." myswva.
org/heartwood.

BILL CRABTREE

"We're losing plant and animal
species at an alarming rate. Every new
construction project means a little
more habitat destroyed. Once a species
becomes extinct, that's it. We're just
trying to slow down the rate at which
they are disappearing by saving some
of the habitat"
-Steve Hobbs, then director of
land protection in the
Virginia office of the
Nature Conservancy
(and now California
senior project director
for the Conservation
Fund), in a March/
April 1989 piece by
Becky Hepler.

900 North Carolina
Acres Protected

hanks to a joint effort of public
agencies, nonprofits, and donors
large and small, 900 acres in the
Blue Ridge foothills in Polk County,
North Carolina, once slated for development, are now permanently protected.
The property includes 13 miles of
streams and an endangered wildflower,
the white irisette. Open Space Institute
played a key role in preserving the land
as part of its Resilience Landscapes
Initiative to help species survive the
changing climate.
"The conservation of Little White Oak
Mountain demonstrates the importance
of protecting land for wildlife facing an
uncertain future," says Peter Howell of
OSI. Two-thirds of the land was transferred to the state to expand the Green
River Game Lands for hiking, hunting
and other outdoor recreation, and the
remaining 300 will be a local park next
to Polk County Middle School. openspaceinstitute.org/news/osi-grantsecures-protection-of-900-acres-innorth-carolina-blue-ridge-foothills

http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019

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