Let's address 'bare spots' on North Carolina's tourism landscape

North Carolina’s latest tourism rankings showed a 4.5% growth rate in 2016, compared to the prior year. All but three of the state’s 100 counties contributed to that increase.

The 2017 figures have not been released yet. The numbers are compiled by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA).

Two counties went backward or lost ground in 2016. The declining tourism economies were Bertie County with a drop of 0.07% and Pender County with a dip of 0.04%. Warren County registered 0.00%, or no change.

Dagnabbit. These three counties are the bare spots on the state’s tourism landscape. They really need our help. We need to go visit them.

The USTA says that tourism in North Carolina has an annual economic impact of nearly $24 billion, making tourism the state’s third largest industry after agriculture and the military. All 100 counties in the state have tourism assets that can be better leveraged. There’s always room for improvement, right?

If we all pitch in, we can certainly give Warren County a little boost to push tourism there into the growth column…and then work our way eastward to Pender and Bertie counties.

A small section of Warren County is located on the Interstate 85 corridor. The challenge being faced by all “bypassed communities” in America is: How to get potential visitors off the highway to see, spend and stay?

Warren County may be viewed as a “tough sell” for your average tourism promoter. There’s not a lot of lodging inventory within the borders of Warren County, so “heads in beds” has not been an especially viable revenue stream.

The county seat of Warrenton has about 850 people and two traffic lights, according to town council member Al Fleming. He says the town has about five minutes of traffic congestion around 5 p.m., “but only on Fridays.”

The town is historic, quaint and a little bit quirky. A new streetscape plan, approved in 2017, is designed to enhance “community character” along Main Street.

The “movement” is already underway, as two old homes have been restored and converted to bed and breakfast inns, antique stores have opened and the old hardware store is now a popular lunchroom. A quilt and gift shop is now operating in the old drug store, an old bank building has been transformed into a bakery and the abandoned car dealer showroom has become a restaurant and bar.

Margaret Britt, also a town council member, appears in Warrenton’s new video that can be accessed on the town’s high-tech website. “We’re a front porch town…and a storybook community,” Britt says. (Somebody needs to alert the Hallmark Channel.)

Warrenton is about 55 miles from downtown Raleigh, so attracting day-trippers from the Triangle region seems to be a perfect strategy to enrich retail sales for Warrenton retailers.

The nearby Town of Norlina (slightly larger, with about 1,050 people) offers up the Norlina Train Museum, which opened in 1976. It’s inside a 70-foot, 1945-vintage Army hospital rail car. (Norlina developed in the late 1890s at the junction of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad.)

Warren County does have its history. The county was formally established in 1779 and is one of 14 counties in the United States to be named for Dr. Joseph Warren of Boston, that great American patriot who was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Boston on June 17, 1775. He was instantly revered as a Revolutionary War martyr.

Dr. Warren, a practicing physician and surgeon, was a friend of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. He was the one who learned that British soldiers were moving toward Lexington and Concord, Mass., and dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes on their “midnight rides” on April 18, 1775, to warn Adams and Hancock as well as to rally patriot militiamen to prepare to fight.

One of Warren County’s native sons was Nathanial Macon, born in 1757 on the family plantation at Buck Spring, located on Hubquarter Creek north of present-day Warrenton.

In those days, Warren County was a hotbed of horse racing and wagering. Growing up, Macon enjoyed doing both. Author Manley Wade Wellman said no one thought much about it when Macon “gambled to win the hand of Hannah Plummer.”

The story goes: Macon challenged an unnamed potential suitor to a card game, with Hannah as the prize. The offer was accepted, but Macon lost the card game. He turned to Hannah and exclaimed, “notwithstanding I have lost you fairly – love is superior to honesty – I cannot give you up.” This short oratory won her favor. The couple was married soon thereafter.

Macon’s way with words also attracted the interest of a like-minded politician named Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The men shared a passion to “represent the people and fight against an ever-encroaching centralized government controlled by an all-powerful magistrate.”

Macon was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1791 and selected Speaker of the House in 1801, a position he held for six years. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1813 and served 15 years, retiring in 1828. He was Senate President Pro Tempore from 1826-27.

Historians commented that during Macon’s time in Washington, D.C., he “always pulled the lever of federal power in favor of the people and the states.”

Fort Macon in Carteret County is named for Nathaniel Macon. It opened in 1834. Today, the old fort is a North Carolina State Park, and it is the most visited site in the park system.

Macon would spend his final years back at Buck Spring. Derrick G. Jeter, an author and public speaking consultant, reported that Macon died in 1837, at age 79, and was buried on family land.

“According to instructions,” Jeter said, Macon’s “grave was to be covered with piles of flint stones to keep him undisturbed.” Furthermore, there would be no funeral service, Macon had ordered.

Instead, Macon’s final gift to mourners was to ensure each received ample “dinner and grog,” Jeter concluded.

The county has created a public park at Buck Spring, and several buildings on the property have been restored. Now, that might be worth a trip.

(You may want to clip and save, for we’re not finished here in Warren County.)