NCLM Volume 70, Issue 4, 2020

SOUTHERN CITY QUARTER 4 2020 16 continued from page 15 We are all working together. It is not a competition. It is truly for the betterment of everybody. Photo Credit: Discover Jackson County. Photo Credit: Ben Brown. Sylva an ideal business location, a great place to visit, and a better place to call home.” Nick Breedlove, Jackson County Tourism Development Authority (TDA) Executive Director and the former mayor of Web- ster, experienced that changing emphasis too. Once asked to almost exclusively work on advertising that invited people to come visit, his job now covers nearly every facet of the destination. “It has shifted over the years from destination market- ing to destination management. What’s the experience like once you get here?” Breedlove said. “If your residents don’t visit your downtown, your visitors won’t either. You’ve got to instill local pride in your community within the residents and make them your advocates.” Breedlove saw the newfound focus as part of an industry-wide shift. Sylva and Jackson County’s success is not in the invention, but rather in the embrace. Now relatively absent of advertising, the area, in many ways, speaks for itself. In many ways, too, it’s still speaking about the same things it always has: its natural resources. The county’s slogan in the 1950s was, “In the middle of the most.” Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains and abutting Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the municipalities of Jackson County tout some of the country’s most exciting nat- ural areas, which as compiled by the TDA include: one of the highest waterfalls east of the Rocky Mountains (Whitewater Falls, at 411 feet), one of the highest lakes east of the Rockies (Lake Glenville at 3,500 feet above sea level), a summit considered by some geologists to be the oldest mountain in the world (Whiteside Mountain at 390 to 460 million years old), and the largest box canyon east of the Rockies (Lone- some Valley). “I looked back at a brochure of Jackson County from the 1920s,” Breedlove said, “and we’re promoting the same things we are today. Fly fishing, hiking, waterfalls.” Still, there was untapped value in this resource. Unlocking it took creativity—“new angles on the same things,” Breedlove said. It also took partnerships, between the towns, the TDA, the Jackson County Cham- ber of Commerce, Western Carolina Univer- sity, and other organizations. Through that collective engine, word of mouth propelled Jackson County’s reputation further than the reach of any billboard. Julie Spiro is in her 21st year at the head of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, and has seen the crowd-sourced advertising firsthand. “People are telling other people,” she said about the area. “People are sharing their experiences, especially through social media and Instagram, posting those beau- tiful pictures of where they're enjoying their life. It helps identify our area.”