Seagrove is a pottery town, Oriental is a sailing town, Pinehurst is a golf town, Tryon is a horse town, and nobody who lives in any of them would argue with the label. That is the whole idea behind this list. In each of these eleven towns the thing to do is settled before the bag is packed, so the weekend goes into doing it rather than deciding. The thing is usually older than the road in, too. Seagrove’s families have fired kilns since the 1700s, and the riding club in Tryon has put on its horse show since the 1920s. Towns with a pleasant downtown and nothing like that behind it did not make the cut.
Highlands
Samuel Kelsey and Clinton Hutchinson picked the site of Highlands in 1875 by drawing two lines on a map, one connecting New York and New Orleans, the other Chicago and Savannah, and building where they crossed. The plateau is at 4,118 feet, which is why the summer crowd arrives in June and why the leaves turn early in October. Dry Falls, three miles west on US 64, drops 75 feet off a ledge, with a paved path that passes behind the water. Whiteside Mountain’s loop trail runs along sheer cliffs several hundred feet high.
The Bascom, a visual arts center in a converted barn complex on Franklin Road, has galleries and a class schedule. Main Street’s shops and restaurants are within a few blocks, and the Old Edwards Inn and Spa is on Main Street itself.