Just as millennia of rain and wind and heat and cold have carved the physical shape of the mountains for which Appalachia is named, so have years of immigration and emigration and peace and war carved the human culture that covers them. Through the centuries, each of millions of lives — men and women, Cherokee and white, black and Hispanic — has added its own chapter to the story. 

It’s shaping up to be a big year for the Appalachian Women’s Museum in Dillsboro. The nonprofit is preparing for its second annual Airing of the Quilts event, will get an artistically designed storytelling installation on its grounds if a grant Western Carolina University is working on goes through, and hopes to start regularly opening its doors to the public during Saturdays summer. 

The Appalachian Women’s Museum finally has a home to call its own.

Dillsboro town council members agreed Monday to lease a section of the historic Monteith farmstead to the organization, whose members have sought a brick and mortar place to honor the feats of Appalachian women.

A long-range plan to create a museum highlighting the role and contribution of Appalachian women might be in limbo.

The Dillsboro town board last month informed representatives of the Appalachian Women’s Museum — which wants to renovate and turn the historic Monteith farmstead into the museum — that they were tabling, for six months, a request to sell or lease part of the property.

“That leaves us up in the air as far as securing funding for the project,” said Emma Wertenberger, president of the museum board. “We are considering options. We would like the partnership, but if it doesn’t work out, there will still be an Appalachian Women’s Museum somewhere.”

Dillsboro Mayor Mike Fitzgerald said he knows the museum group is disappointed by the town board’s decision, but that it might well resurface before the six-month stipulation has passed.

“They are looking at it still,” Fitzgerald said of his board. “They just don’t want it to keep coming up every meeting and taking up time.”

Additionally, the town board’s members are simply acting as good stewards of taxpayer dollars by carefully reviewing any possible legal ramifications of such a deal, he said. The group is eying 1.4 acres that comprise the core farmstead out of a total 16-acre tract.

The delay, in the short term at least, will hinder attempts to secure certain grants, Wertenberger said. The group says gaining title to the property is critical to secure funding to restore the historic farmhouse, which would house the museum.

The town of Dillsboro bought the Monteith farmstead in 2003. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places five years later.

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Shoes stained with red clay mud and covered with sweat and bits of hay from a morning spent cleaning out the shed on the back of the Monteith property, Sam Hale leads a one person tour through the farmstead’s nearly century-old house pointing out artifacts along the way.