Seek out old-growth forests, live bluegrass, and an old-school fish fry.
The Explorer’s Guide to Road Tripping Around Appalachia

The land in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the world’s richest temperate rainforests, and Joyce Kilmer stands as one of the oldest examples of it. These are the woods that fired the imaginations of the first European explorers about the so-called “New World” and its wealth of biodiversity. Wandering in these woods, one is humbled by the world and its enormity. Old-growth forests truly inspire one to dream.

Botanists have been known to speak in hushed tones when talking about the memorial forest and larger Joyce Kilmer-Slick Rock Wilderness of which it’s a part. It’s not hard to understand why. This is one of the best places to see old-growth Appalachian forest. With trees that measure more than 20 feet in circumference, 100 feet in height, and more than 400 years in age, it’s almost easy to forget that almost all of the Appalachian Mountains have been cut and slashed for timber in the last 300 years. Rich forests cloak the mountainsides today, but they’re a pale shadow of the majestic forests that predated the timber rush of the 1800s. 

The large-scale timbering of Appalachia’s forest decimated old-growth, but it also opened up huge swaths of land. That’s what makes Black Balsam Knob so enticing: Most Appalachian peaks are covered in dense woods, blocking potential panoramas. Many mountaintop views are visible only in the winter. 

That’s not the case at Black Balsam Knob, a sprawling grassy area where you can see for miles year-round. These balds were created by a combination of clearcuts and fire. The result is an extraordinary view of the surrounding mountains, including Looking Glass Rock, Mount Pisgah, and Cold Mountain—the peak whose name was used for Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, which was then adapted into a 2003 feature film starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger. On clear days, you might even see Mount Mitchell 45 miles to the north east—the highest point in the eastern U.S.

North Carolina native Ashleigh Shanti came up championing Southern food and worked in restaurants around the world. During her two years as opening chef de cuisine of Benne on Eagle, the fine dining Southern restaurant picked up recognition from press all over the country. She could have easily stayed on that track, but Shanti decided to set out on her own path. After a break, she launched Good Hot Fish with a series of pop-ups. When Burial Beer Company, the local brewery where she'd been making pop-up appearances, purchased the building next door to convert it into a concert venue, Shanti took the opportunity to open Good Hot Fish in a permanent space. 

The restaurant serves food you’d expect to find at a Black Appalachian fish fry. The menu is limited, and based largely around what’s fresh and available. On a December day, choices included whiting, catfish, trout, and flounder. The fish plate is the most popular item; it comes with a choice of fish breaded, battered or blackened, along with hushpuppies, pickles, tartar sauce and a choice of two sides. Other items are available, too, including cabbage pancakes, a shrimp burger, and trout bologna.

Near the end of his oft-bleak history of Appalachia, historian John Alexander Williams cites Jonesborough, Tennessee, as one possible future for the region’s small towns. He specifically calls out Jonesborough as a community that successfully reinvented itself through the preservation of its historic buildings and the escalation of an annual fall festival into the International Storytelling Festival. As Williams tells it, the festival caught tailwinds from a national storytelling revival that was tied to the counterculture’s 1970s shift away from politics toward spirituality and personal growth. 

The festival is hosted by the International Storytelling Center, which operates during regular hours throughout the week. The International Storytelling Center features storytellers from around the world, but it takes pains to spotlight Appalachian storytellers like Sheila Kay Adams and Bil Lepp. 

“Our most popular storytellers are Appalachian, but we bring people a lot of other storytellers who tell African-American stories, or Anne Shimojima, who talks about her family's incarceration in Japanese camps in the United States,” says Angela White, a spokeswoman for the center. “There’s room for everyone on that spectrum of storytelling, so we have the stereotypical Appalachian, but we also have a little bit of everything else.”

He didn’t become a star until the 1940s, but in the space of six years Hank Williams recorded dozens of hits and redefined country music forever. Williams was only 29 when, on December 30, 1952, he headed out on a ride from Alabama, through Knoxville, Tennessee, to a New Year’s Eve gig in Charleston, West Virginia. Williams laid down in the backseat, wrapped in a blanket and loaded on booze, morphine, chloral hydrate, and vitamin B12.

According to legend, his driver stopped in downtown Bristol, Virginia, to get gas and check a cab stand to see if he could find a relief driver. Next door was a diner, the Burger Bar. The driver asked Williams if he wanted anything to eat. Williams declined, saying he just wanted to sleep. Next time they stopped, in Oak Hill, West Virginia, Williams was found and pronounced dead. More than 25,000 people attended his funeral.

To its credit, the Burger Bar doesn’t lean all that hard into the “Hank Williams’ last words” story. These days, it doesn’t need to. The diner has defied the passage of time and remained open under numerous owners. The Burger Bar’s current owner and operator don’t seem so worried about the legend.

The site that’s now Breaks Interstate Park was covered by an inland sea 180 million years ago—about 100 million years before the Rockies were formed. The Russell Fork River, which dumps into the Big Sandy River and eventually the Mississippi, carved valleys through the area. Appalachia is home to numerous mountain gorges, but the one at Breaks is the deepest canyon in the eastern U.S. Famed mountain longhunter Daniel Boone named the area “The Breaks.” It’s now a dual state park, jointly operated by Kentucky and Virginia. While the park exhibits some of Appalachia’s ancient geography, it’s also home to one of the region’s newest big industries: outdoor recreation.

Breaks Interstate Park features a lot of the same rugged terrain and outdoor recreation opportunities of national parks to its north and south, but a tiny fraction of the crowds. The Russell Fork River has technical whitewater for paddlers, with sections ranging from class III - V rapids, depending on flow levels. The sandstone walls of the canyons make for stellar rock climbing with both traditional and sport-climbing routes.

European settlers took note of the various warm and hot springs located throughout Appalachia, especially along the Virginia/West Virginia border. Some of these gave rise to resorts: The Greenbrier in West Virginia and the Homestead in Virginia both were built near hot springs thought to have restorative properties. 

Then there’s Gunpowder Springs, located west of Blacksburg, Virginia. It gave rise to the town of Eggleston, which visitors accessed by train. Beginning in 1926, Pyne’s General Store supplied town residents with necessary goods such as dishes, shoes, clothes, fresh produce, and meat, while attached buildings functioned as an auto shop and doctor’s office. Today, the general store building is occupied by the Palisades Restaurant, which supplies people throughout Virginia’s New River Valley with good food and music.

Appalachia has provided cultural riches to the world, but its greatest achievement may be string-band music, particularly old-time and bluegrass. In essence, it’s Appalachia's core story: immigrants move and bring their culture into the mountains, and become part of the greater whole. Appalachian string-band music combines African-rooted banjo; fiddle and ballads from Scotland, England, and Ireland; and numerous other musical strains to make something new that couldn’t have originated anywhere else. 

Perhaps the best thing about mountain string music is that it’s populist, taught in after-school programs across the region and regularly played by people across all walks of life. Come to Floyd’s Friday Night Jamboree and you’ll see. The Floyd Country Store hosts the weekly jam that’s been carrying on for more than 40 years. Each week, bands perform a gospel set and then a dance set, during which the store’s hardwood floors become an exceptionally welcoming dance floor. Most weeks during the year, amateur bands set up and play on the street outside the store, drawing their own crowds and dancers. Friday nights in Floyd are packed with string bands playing inside the country store and outside, as people mill around and enjoy all the music in the air. 

Black American residents surged through Appalachia in the decades following the Civil War, as part of an exodus from the Deep South. Many families landed in Roanoke, Virginia, after the Norfolk and Western Railway established its headquarters and railway shops there in 1882. The former town of Big Lick became Roanoke, supposedly a Native American term for money, in the form of shell beads. In the decades after Norfolk and Western set up shop, locals called it “Magic City” for the jobs and prosperity it attracted. These newer arrivals could land relatively lucrative porter jobs, and Roanoke’s Black population swelled.

By 1920, Black Roanoke was booming and carrying on its own version of the Harlem Renaissance. Henry Street was the business district of Gainsboro, the city's oldest town and the heart of Roanoke’s Black community. The neighborhood gave rise to a number of outstanding individuals now cited for Black excellence: Lucy Addison, a teacher who successfully pushed for Roanoke’s first Black high school; Edward Dudley, who in 1949 became the United States’ first Black ambassador, to Liberia; and Oliver Hill, whose legal work for the NAACP led to Brown v. Board of Education, which integrated public schools.

Meanwhile, the Hotel Dumas and Strand Theater hosted jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, and Dizzy Gillespie. Pioneering filmmaker Oscar Micheaux set up a Roanoke office for his film production company. Micheaux directed more than 40 movies—most of them screened exclusively for Black audiences in segregated theaters—and is recognized as the first Black man to direct a feature-length film. He shot up to six films in Roanoke and caused a commotion among the city’s business people when, according to a 1922 Roanoke Times story, “they saw Highland Park in the midst of a shocking drama scene and later the streets of the city with ebony skinned cowboys dashing madly past.”

Appalachia has been pigeonholed as a place out of time—but Tucker County, West Virginia really does exist in its own dimension. The county frequently records the coldest temperatures on the East Coast with its own microclimate. The area is home to the bathtub-shaped Canaan Valley, the Canada-like bogs and heath barrens of Dolly Sods Wilderness, and the rugged Blackwater Canyon—all of which give it an unearthly aura. Amid these wild wonders are the twin towns of Davis and Thomas. Davis, population 595, feels oriented more toward outdoor adventurers while Thomas is a proper city, population 623. Both communities feel informed by a frontier mentality largely shaped by the county’s outdoor and tourist economies, yet thoroughly grounded in the locals who run the businesses here.

To get to the heart of it all, look no further than the Purple Fiddle, a Thomas restaurant and live music venue that’s become a community gathering place for locals as well as visitors. At its core, the Purple Fiddle is a solid place to get drinks and a meal, but it really shines in its ability to book mostly acoustic up-and-coming musical acts. The Avett Brothers, Sierra Ferrell and S.G. Goodman cut their teeth at the Purple Fiddle before going big. The venue is an incubator for the West Virginia music scene, but it’s also booked bigger acts like Afroman Keller Williams. In fact, the Purple Fiddle books so many bands that it's almost difficult not to catch the next big thing on the stage there.