BRYSON CITY, N.C. — When the state shut down restaurants to slow the spread of the coronavirus in March, Ashley Owens Rutkosky turned off the lights and locked the doors at Bourbon Barrel Beef & Ale in Waynesville.
The Haywood County native served steaks, fancy sandwiches and craft beer at her restaurant for a decade before the coronavirus forced her to close. But three weeks ago, Rutkosky and her chef launched Truckin’ Tasty, a new food truck.
“It’s kind of been a bittersweet thing,” she said from her food truck, parked during a sunny day this week in Bryson City. “This is a lot less stress.”
Nine months after the state shut down because of the coronavirus in March, the economic recovery of this area high in the North Carolina mountains has been driven by tourists.
People around the country have been looking to escape the boredom of being cooped up during the pandemic to the seeming safety and easier social distancing of National Parks and more rural areas. Bryson City, a picturesque mountain town just over the border from the tourist Mecca of Gatlinburg, is just that sort of destination.
Reports from the fall show people flocked to the North Carolina mountains to see the leaves change along the Blue Ridge, an annual pilgrimage for many. The leaves have fallen now, and colder winter weather has moved in.
“Winter is just hard everywhere here,” Rutkosky said, speaking through the window of her food truck. But the tourists were still coming, even with reduced capacity in bars and restaurants. The main attraction in Bryson, The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, is running it’s annual Polar Express ride for Christmas sightseers at 50% capacity.
Nantahala Brewing Company has been doing good business, even with social distancing. The parking lot was busy on a recent sunny afternoon with cars from Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
“Business is booming,” one bartender told out-of-town customers filtering in to get lunch and a local beer on a sunny afternoon this week.
State public health officials list Swain County, home to Bryson City and Cherokee, as an area with “critical community spread” of the coronavirus. Statewide, North Carolina has been reporting record coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations.
More than 5,700 people have died from COVID-19 in North Carolina so far.
Swain County has been listed as a red zone since the Department of Health and Human Services first started releasing the county-by-county maps last month.
About 14,000 people live in Swain County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The county reports 485 people in Swain have tested positive for the coronavirus, and five people have died.
State data shows the coronavirus numbers in Swain, although generally low, have been increasing since the start of the fall tourism season.
On Wednesday, Swain County reported it’s second highest day of newly reported cases, adding 17 to the total.
On Friday morning, the clerk of superior court’s office in Swain County announced they would be closed until Tuesday because of exposure to the coronavirus, according to the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts.
As cases have surged in North Carolina, the situation has gotten worse for many counties in western North Carolina. Most counties along the Tennessee border have gone from yellow or orange to red on the state’s coronavirus county map.
Unemployment in Swain County is low at 5%, well below the statewide rate of 6.1%. But the median household income is also lower than the state average at about $43,000, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
The economy in Bryson City and neighboring Cherokee is based on two things: tourism in the mountain towns and gambling at the Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.
The Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort sticks out like a thumb on Highway 19, which winds through the mountains down from Interstate 40.
Construction workers at the casino are busy building a new tower and convention center on the resort.
“Business has been better than we feared,” Casino Spokesman Brian Saunooke said. It’s down from 2019, he said, but it could have been much worse.
He said they’ve turned off some slot machines and cut the number of people at the table games, leaving the casino floor to operate at about two-thirds capacity. The casino shut down in March but reopened in May.
“Summer was a really busy time for us,” he said in an interview. But things have slowed down again.
Workers and guests at the casino have to get their temperature taken when they come in and always have to wear a mask. Saunooke said most people will mask up without a problem, but “on occasion you’ll have a customer who doesn’t love that.”
The casino is in the Qualla Boundary, land owned by the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. Because it’s on tribal land, the casino is not subject to state executive orders, including Roy Cooper’s latest order that will cut off alcohol sales at 9 p.m. and institutes a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. each night.
That order begins Friday night for the rest of North Carolina
While business might be humming along at the casino, it’s a different scene a mile down the road.
Gabby Davis has been in Cherokee for 45 years. She runs the Old Tyme Portraits shop, sitting in a prime location near the welcome center and just across from the Harley Davidson shop.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said, standing in front of the shop wearing cowboy boots and a grey hoodie. “The last two weeks, it’s been pitiful.”
She said she’s been running the shop, where people will stop to get kitschy sepia photos dressed up as cowboys or 1930s gangsters.
“Fall was decent,” she said. But things have dropped off again: “It’s bad all the way around.”
She said the tourists who go to the casino have not been leaving the resort to come down the road to get a photo. To make matters worse, the Pizza Inn next door, which serves buffet pizza, has shut down for the pandemic. She used to get families who would come over after a pizza dinner.
She said tourists who would normally be drawn to her shop would probably rather be just an hour away over the border in Gatlinburg. “Tennessee is wide open,” she said, “they don’t wear masks or anything.”