June 8, 2006 issue
Steadfast Steward of High Country Tourism: Hugh Morton and His Personal Crusade; A Conversation With Spencer Robbins
Story by Jamie Goodman
Fifty years ago, Spencer Robbins was a young man working to develop the family business, a small attraction known as The Blowing Rock, into a more viable alternative for visitors. During that time period, most tourist-oriented businesses in the region were small, mom-and-pop type establishments with meager operating budgets and minimal profits. The primary goal was staying afloat.
The year was 1956, and the face of tourism in the region was about to turn a very significant corner.
During that year, Robbins met several times with another young man with similar goals - Hugh Morton, owner of the newly formed Grandfather Mountain attraction. Morton possessed a strong love for the region and a belief that the area could be marketed in such a way as to attract a broad spectrum of visitors.
The result of those meetings was the founding of the Southern Highlands Attractions Association in 1957, an organization headed by Morton and Robbins which was created to promote the Southern Appalachian mountain region, and included such attractions as Luray Caverns, Natural Bridge and Barter Theatre in the northern areas, and south down to Rock City and Chattanooga, Tennessee. The organization still exists today, and has done much to promote and support tourism in the Southern Appalachian region.
But the friendship between the two, according to Robbins, didn't start there. "Hugh's family and my family knew each other even before then," Robbins added. Robbins was born and raised in the area; Morton's family was from Wilmington, but had split their affections between the sea and the mountains since before Hugh was born - Linville being a particular favorite with the family.
"Hugh's grandfather built the golf course at Linville," said Robbins. "The entire Morton family have always been great custodians of the land; his grandfather, father, Hugh himself, his son and daughter, and now his grandson Crae. They have always been instilled with that instinct to protect the land and all that is natural."
During the early years of the Southern Highlands Attractions Association, Morton and Robbins worked hard not only to promote the idea of tourism in the region, but also to protect the very natural and native beauty they believed would draw people to visit. One of their biggest fights came in the early 1960s, when Morton opposed the National Park Service's plan to push the Blue Ridge Parkway across the top of Grandfather Mountain - a move which would have destroyed much of what makes Grandfather a rich ecosystem, as well as damaging the integrity of the surrounding region.
"The Park Service was forceful for many years trying to get this to happen," Robbins said, "but Hugh was a man of convictions, and was convinced the road should not go across the top of the mountain."
The fight was long and difficult, but in the end he persevered. The Parkway plan was changed to travel across the mid-section of the mountain and included Hugh's daring and innovative ideas of native plant preservation that eventually lead to the construction of the Linn Cove Viaduct.
In another confrontation with the National Park Service, Morton and Robbins traveled to Washington, D.C. to personally lobby the Secretary of the Interior to stop plans to build resorts and lodging along the Parkway, an action which would have taken business away from the small communities near the scenic highway and put money into the federal coffers instead.
"We always envisioned the Parkway to be the medium to bring business to the towns along the way," Robbins said, "not for the taxpayers to pay to bring business to the Parkway. We did not think this was a fair approach."
The success of this campaign lead to numerous communities along the Parkway which today thrive on tourism overflowing from the scenic road.
Kicking Into High Gear: The High Country Host
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Morton and Robbins, along with Grandfather Mountain's Harris Prevost and other motivated individuals, continued to promote tourism in the region through the Southern Highlands Attractions Association. Their mode was simple: They improved their own respective attractions while respecting the natural environment that surrounded them.
"Hugh could have sold off the land [on Grandfather Mountain] for millions of dollars, but he wanted all people to enjoy that property," Robbins said.
It was during this time period that ingenuity once again overcame adversity. None of the local attractions could really afford to buy advertising in national publications, but Morton, Robbins and Prevost knew they had to somehow reach the national market if they were to spread the word about the tourism opportunities in the region. They hired a professional photojournalist to write a story on area attractions, hoping the article would make it into some mid-level distribution publications. To their surprise, the story on Grandfather Mountain, Tweetsie, the Blowing Rock and Horn in the West appeared in the nationally syndicated Parade Magazine, which runs in the Sunday edition of most daily newspapers.
"We were flooded with inquiries to the Blowing Rock Chamber (the contact in the article)," Robbins said, "so much so that we couldn't afford to answer it all! Between the [four] organizations, we did a lot of promotion together in the early days, but it was still pretty well localized. We experienced a small but steady growth in tourism through that time period."
It was during the 1980s, however, when the regional tourism industry received the boost it truly needed to put the area on the map. And of course, Hugh Morton and Spencer Robbins, together with Morton's right hand man Harris Prevost, were there at the forefront, spearheading the creation of what would be the biggest boon to the local economy: a non-profit organization known as The High Country Host, devoted to the promotion and enrichment of the region as a tourism destination.
"Hugh was instrumental in starting the High Country Host," said Robbins. "It started out as a three county program, covering Ashe, Avery and Watauga counties. He saw the need for that kind of promotion."
"We knew it wasn't just Boone, Blowing Rock or Linville, it was a combination of the area. And Hugh knew this better than anyone."
Not wanting to interfere with the efforts of the local Chambers of Commerce, Morton and Robbins included as one of the first bylaws the clause that anyone wanting to become a member of the High Country Host had to be an existing member of one of the area Chambers first.
The group raised $75,000 during their first meeting, and set to work immediately. Their initial plan of action was to create a three-county comprehensive brochure. Morton freely donated his photography - and photographed new images at no cost - for use in the brochures.
"The Chambers of Commerce all had their own individual brochures of their towns," Robbins explained. "We knew if we combined the efforts of all of them, we could create a much better consolidated instrument for bringing people here, with maps and information about the entire area." The brochures were eventually expanded to cover the High Country Host's current six-county region.
The organization, lead by the ever-industrious Morton, also launched their biggest campaign, which was to encourage travel writers and editors to visit the region as guests. Individual businesses in the High Country teamed up to offer services for the project, and Morton and Robbins went to New York City to recruit representatives to come to the High Country.
The writers who came were wined and dined with High Country flair; local businesses chipped in with free or discounted meals, lodging and attraction tickets, and the result was a resounding success, with numerous write-ups in national publications.
"Hugh was the strongest promoter and supporter of [the High Country Host]," Robbins said. "Hugh's efforts with the [organization] definitely had an impact on tourism in the area. He had a quality of leadership that very few people have."
Promoting A State
Morton's passion for promoting what he loved and held dear went far beyond the small mountain counties he called home. His deep love for the entire state of North Carolina, and for the southern Appalachian mountain region as a whole, led him to help promote numerous attractions and organizations other than his own. The Southern Highlands Attractions Association, one of Morton's key projects, now publicly promotes everything from the Shenandoah Valley to the Smoky Mountains and everything in between. Morton himself was one of the primary instrumentalists that helped bring home the Battleship North Carolina to his hometown of Wilmington, and was a staunch fan of the University of North Carolina Tarheels. He hardly ever missed a home basketball game, and was a fixture under the home team's basket for many, many years, sitting on the floor with camera in hand.
Morton was also a very active politician, and frequently engaged his knowledge of politics to further the cause of environmentalism and tourism. Once, during the mid-1980s, Morton started to run for Governor but changed his mind part of the way through his campaign.
"He decided he didn't want to take the time to do all the fighting it would take to become governor," Robbins said. "He decided he could do more for the state in the capacity he was already in than becoming governor."
"If it was good for the state, [Hugh] took part in it."
The efforts by Morton, along with Robbins, Prevost and other local leaders, helped to build the High Country from a small, isolated community into a booming, multi-million dollar tourist destination.
"The whole area has so much more going for it now than it did back [in the 1950s]. The North Carolina Symphony now comes to spend a month in the area - that should speak of how it has grown, thanks to [Hugh's] efforts," said Robbins.
"I have always had a great respect for Hugh," Robbins added. "Hugh Morton was probably the primary leader in the development of the entire region. People saw the quality in his developing the mountain the way he did without destroying anything.”
"It's all added to the incentive for people to come to the mountains to visit and live. If there was anyone who had a love for this region and for the land, Hugh did."
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