Avery

Avery County Historical Society, Inc.
Avery County Historical Museum
The Avery County Historical Museum collects, preserves, and displays vital information, photographs, and artifacts about people, events, and places that shaped the history of Avery County and the surrounding area. Located in the old Avery County jail adjacent to the courthouse, the Avery County Historical Museum also preserves and interprets this historic building.

Sunny Brook Store
Sunny Brook Store is the childhood home of acclaimed North Carolina author Gloria Houston. A general store from 1937-1988, Sunny Brook Store now operates as a bookstore for Houston's works and a museum dedicated to her life, her work with children, her impact on the local community and its influence on her. Mrs. Ruth Houston, Gloria Houston's mother, runs the business and personally conducts tours of the museum.

Avery County Morrison Public Library (Avery-Mitchell-Yancey Regional Library)
Avery County Morrison Public Library North Carolina Room
Avery County Morrison Public Library's North Carolina Room houses published materials, microfilm, and other sources useful in researching North Carolina, regional, and local history and genealogy. The Morrison Room houses the personal library collection of Robert F. Morrison.

Lees-McRae College
James H. Carson Library, Stirling Collection
The Stirling Collection of the James H. Carson Library was established with the aim of preserving a variety of materials relating to the Southern Appalachian region. In 1929, when Alison Stirling joined Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina as its first librarian, one of her goals was to create a special North Carolina and Appalachian Collection. Miss Stirling's goal was in full accord with the college's motto: "In, of, and for the mountains." The catalogued material in the Stirling, or North Carolina Room, includes books, pamphlets, sound recordings (folk music and tales and field interviews), videotapes, and microfilm (primarily local area newspapers). Most of the uncatalogued materials consist of loose clippings, brochures, leaflets and other such media in the collection's vertical files. A subject guide to the vertical files identifies general categories. The collection contains many artifacts; these range from an impressive hand-built lathe once used in the campus woodworking shop to pottery by famed North Carolina master potter Ben Owen. The collection doubles as a campus museum.

Grandfather Mountain Nature Museum
The Museum houses more than two dozen exhibits designed to educate guests about the natural history of Grandfather Mountain and the surrounding region. Exhibit topics include North Carolina gems and minerals, birds of North Carolina, early explorers to visit Grandfather Mountain including Daniel Boone, Andre Michaux, Asa Gray, Native American artifacts found on Grandfather Mountain, a scale model of the mountain, and photo exhibits about each of the animals found in the Mountain's wildlife habitats. In addition, the museum houses a collection of life-like wax models of wildflowers, berries and mushrooms found on Grandfather Mountain crafted by the late Paul Marchand.