No Country for Big-Box Stores

As a little girl, Kelly Sutton sang along to Dolly Parton while dancing on the counters of the Big Creek Country Store. Now the 30-year-old spends her days behind those counters, finding her rhythm as a small business owner in the isolated community of Mount Sterling, North Carolina.

Sutton’s great-grandparents, Mack and Etta Caldwell, built the Big Creek Country Store in 1927. The same year, Carolina Power and Light built the Walters Hydroelectric Plant on the nearby Pigeon River, where it still operates today. The Big Creek Country Store served the needs of the secluded settlement, offering groceries, clothing, and household items until the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 and the completion of the Appalachian Trail in 1937 began to draw the occasional outsider.

Over the decades, the population of Mount Sterling dwindled; today it tops out at 30-something. After the store closed in the late 1980s or early 1990s, the building began to decay. But in 2012 Sutton moved to Mount Sterling eager for a fresh start. After three years of cleaning and renovating the shuttered shop—which had turned into a storage space for the possessions of deceased relatives, and one with a bat problem to boot—she reopened the heavy wooden doors of the Big Creek Country Store last fall.

Today a cowbell mounted on the outside of the screen door signals the arrival of visitors—lost hikers looking for the Appalachian Trail, the mail man doing his rounds, folks in need of basic commodities.

“They think it’s funny, but I’ve got a sign out front that says free directions with any purchase,” Sutton says. “It’s sort of a joke, but it’s serious too, because if I just gave directions all day, I’d never make any money.”

The store sits just three-quarters of a mile south of the Tennessee border, and less than a quarter mile from both the Big Creek Ranger Station and the trailhead for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s Chestnut Branch Trail. Big Creek Country Store lists a mailing address 18 miles away in Newport, Tennessee, despite being physically located in Haywood County, North Carolina. FedEx and UPS drivers, however, use physical addresses for delivery, and Sutton’s is technically Waynesville, despite being located almost 40 miles from town in a valley with no cell service and a shoddy GPS signal.  Complicating matters further, the store’s Waynesville address—67 Mount Sterling Road—is often confused with a similar address north of Clyde, 30 miles to the southeast. 

Much of Sutton’s extended family lives in the area and owns almost all of the land, as they have for generations. Many residents are retirement-age but still plant gardens and hunt, making them nearly self-sufficient. 

When they do need something from the outside world, Hartford, Tennessee, is a convenient but expensive option seven miles distant. Prices in Tennessee are “a lot higher” than North Carolina, Sutton says, because of taxes and the bustling tourist economy.

“If they need something I don’t have, I’ll try to get it for them,” she says, admitting that she stocks up on periodic runs to the Walmart in Waynesville or the Sam’s Club in Asheville because most distributors won’t deliver to her far-flung location.

Though she grew up in Boone, Sutton’s been part of the community since she was born and remembers spending almost every other weekend of her life there. 

“We used it for a home for a long time,” she says. “We had two bedrooms in the store part and two bedrooms on the side, which were also the living room and kitchen. My bedroom was the kitchen. My main memory is waking up to the sound and smell of coffee.”

The building itself hasn’t changed much since it was originally constructed—especially the interior. It’s about 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a counter running almost the entire length of the structure. 

The walls aren’t exactly walls—the thick, two-by-twelve boards that make up the shelving that rings the store are what actually hold up the roof. Locally cut hemlock siding running on the exterior is nailed to wormy chestnut on the inside, which is in turn nailed to the shelves. 

Those shelves are stocked, floor to ceiling, with a curious mix of survival gear, food,         apparel, personal care items, local artwork,     and antiques. Sunscreen, beef jerky, socks,           sanitizer, sketches, and stemware abound, offering options for hardcore hikers, weekend warriors, or ambling antique hunters just looking for a bargain.

Sutton rings up purchases on her tablet computer. “We have internet and phone now,” she says. “That’s a first for this building.”

If the idea of paying for antiques (or junk food) with debit cards on a tablet in a 90-year-old country store isn’t odd enough, Sutton produces one of her grandfather’s ledgers from 1949, on which he used to keep track of what was owed and by whom. 

Among entries for primitive household staples like beer, bleach, flour, and lard, the ledger says that on Nov. 30, 1949, someone named Ray bought tobacco and pencil lead. 

That set Ray back 30 cents.

“When I was little I used to play store in here all the time,” Sutton says. “I had a little cash register, and my mom would have empty egg cartons, and I would ring people up. I was an only child, so I had to entertain myself. I would have never thought that I’d end up doing this for real.”

About the author: Cory Vaillancourt is a reporter for Smoky Mountain News in Waynesville, North Carolina.