Community Centers Create Local Connections
As America was settled, the first residents of a new community generally had to make their own entertainment and social opportunities. Not surprisingly, when a settlement grew to include more people and businesses, a community center was often one of its first constructions.
Residents within reach of the center had a way to preserve heritage and music, share meals and stories, and take care of one another, with a wide variety of sponsored programs helping to create a shared sense of belonging.
That’s certainly the case with the five community centers located in Upper Transylvania County. We’ll be exploring each of them — Balsam Grove, Eastatoe, Lake Toxaway, Quebec, and Silversteen — in more detail in this new series.
LOCAL ORIGINS
According to a 2019 Picturing the Past series in the Transylvania Times, the county’s rural neighborhoods began organizing community clubs in the early-to-mid 1950s. Two WNC non-profit groups* who had been established a decade earlier helped them get started.
Community members renovated old schoolhouses or built new buildings across the county, with a goal of bringing people together through educational, civic, and social activities at these centers.
Originally, educational opportunities focused on agricultural improvements, home extension (maintenance, gardening, and the like), and 4-H clubs. Other projects included infrastructure improvements such as paving roads and expanding rural electrific and telephone service; housing and home improvements, like renovations to older homes and building new ones; and entrepreneur opportunities centered on boosting family incomes with readily available resources.
Each year, community clubs were required to submit a summary report of progress in such categories as Better Family Living, Community Programs, Youth Programs, and Family Income Development.
These reports offer a vivid picture of 1950s life in rural communities of Western North Carolina including records of home improvements like painting, adding running water, or installing bathroom fixtures; the number of new homes built and new mobile homes added; the number of new vehicles purchased; major electrical appliances added to homes, and landscape projects. In some cases, the details even extended to the number of families who had regular medical and dental check-ups, health insurance and bank accounts, and how many subscribed to a newspaper or magazine.
Over the years, our county community clubs helped to establish volunteer fire departments, improve roads, and push for increased mail and telephone service. Some focused on improving the appearance of their communities through projects such as roadside clean-up, adding signage and landscaping.
Members often held fund raisers for a variety of projects and participated in civic events such as Christmas parades in Brevard and Rosman or in maintaining the community center itself as well as nearby church and cemetery grounds.
Community Centers of Upper Transylvania County
Youth clubs such as 4-H, scout troops, Future Farmers of America, and Future Homemakers were also often sponsored by community clubs.
As many still do today, each group reported the weekly news for publication in the Transylvania Times, and often welcomed the Transylvania County Library bookmobile on its regular rounds.
To learn more about Upper Transylvania County’s five community centers, watch for Part 2 of our series, coming soon.
*WNC Associated Communities and WNC Community Development Association; in 2000, the two merged under the latter name; then, in 2003, the organization became WNC Communities.
