End of the Line for Tweetsie?
High Country Needs to Unite to Save Theme Park

Dead Man’s Curve! Tweetsie Railroad has an honest to goodness cemetery in the middle of the theme park. Top that, Disney World! Photo by Jeff Eason

When my family first moved to Watauga County in 1976, I would occasionally see Appalachian State University students wearing T-shirts that read “UNC at Tweetsie.” They had taken a derogatory nickname given to App State by students at other schools and embraced it, turning it into an inside joke and a source of pride.

The joke was that Tweetsie Railroad was the only thing that some people knew about the High Country in those days.

My first Tweetsie memories, however, go back to the 1960s when my family would visit our relatives who lived in Boone. My grandfather Council would load up his big brown Cadillac with my immediate family plus my Aunt Pauline and Cousin Ricky for a trip to Tweetsie whenever we were in town. Even as a kid I had suspicions that as theme parks went, Tweetsie wasn’t as grand as legendary places like Disneyland, Sea World, or even Cedar Point. That was beside the point. All I knew was that a trip to Tweetsie made visiting my relatives in Boone a vacation event.

Later on, after we moved here, I made friends with lots of people who turned their summer vacation into a summer vocation by working at Tweetsie. Most people stop pretending to be cowboys and Indians long before they enter high school. Here were people actually getting paid for extending the pretending all the way through college. I never worked at Tweetsie but I wish I had, if only for the opportunity to put “train robber” or “gunslinger” on my resumé. And I just know that somewhere out there in our area a woman has the makings of a thrilling coming-of-age memoir titled “I Was A Teenage Saloon Girl.”

Where else can you get those kinds of memories?

Not only is Tweetsie part and parcel of who we are in the High Country, it brings millions of dollars to the area each year. Visitors to Tweetsie stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants and shop at our stores. For many of these families, it is one of the biggest vacations they will take during the year and I, for one, don’t think we should take their visits to the High Country lightly. They are on average younger than some of our other tourists and I like the idea of getting them while they’re young. It might lead to a lifetime of visiting us and spending money here.

Because of unresolved negotiations with the people who own the property where Tweetsie has been for over half a century, the theme park may have to move to another location after the 2006 season. The owners of Tweetsie have said that a decision to stay or go will have to be made before too long if they are going to have time to plan a move to somewhere else.

If you are wondering where Tweetsie could possibly move, it has been rumored that nefarious neighboring counties such as Wilkes and Caldwell have been courting our little theme park lately. Shame on you! Keep your filthy Piedmont paws off our train! Wilkes County has MerleFest and Caldwell County has, well, Lenoir, so they shouldn’t be coveting our touristy stuff.

Tweetsie belongs in the mountains, preferably right where it is. I’m really quite surprised that this issue has not created rioting in the streets of Boone and Blowing Rock. There should be sit-ins and protests and people with signs that say “You can have Tweetsie when you pry my cold dead fingers off the caboose.”

Seriously, I can’t imagine Tweetsie anywhere else. And I don’t even want to think about what they would put on that hill between Boone and Blowing Rock if Tweetsie ever left. If I ever drive around that curve on Highway 321 and see student housing, a bank and a strip mall where Tweetsie once sat, I believe I will probably throw up. Hopefully I will be able to pull off the road and roll my window down first.

So what can people who want Tweetsie to stay do about it? Well for one thing, I plan to write our representatives Virginia Foxx, Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr about this matter. It is an economic concern that is vital to our area and I see no reason why they shouldn’t get involved.

I’m also encouraging anyone with interesting Tweetsie memories to write to me here at The Mountain Times. Maybe if we publish enough of these stories, everyone involved will realize how much Tweetsie means to the people of the High Country.

Send your Tweetsie Memories to:
Jeff Eason, Entertainment Editor, The Mountain Times, P.O. Box 1815, Boone, NC 28607. Or email me at: eason@mountaintimes.com.