Digital Commons Network^™

Selling The Southern Highlands: Tourism And Community Development In The Mountain South, Christopher Brenden Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

Focusing on Buncombe County, North Carolina, Blount County, Tennessee, and Sevier County, Tennessee as representative resort areas in the mountain South, this study recognizes tourism as a central factor in the historical development of the region's cultural identity, economy, and landscape. In studying the variant development patterns of resort communities in the southern highlands, it is apparent that tourism has simultaneously produced both continuity and change as well as positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, tourism has often served as a source of economic, cultural, and environmental preservation. Tourism has helped to maintained cultural distinctiveness, historical identity, and …