week of 1/14/04
 
 
 
  Swain courthouse may become interactive museum
By Becky Johnson

A Swain County community group is nearly finished with plans to convert a vacant portion of the historic courthouse into a cultural heritage museum.

The museum has been in the making for three years as part of a regional initiative to preserve mountain culture and heritage as a tourism draw. The museum would cover 4,000-square-feet on the third floor of the 1900, classic revival courthouse on Everett Street in downtown Bryson City.

Nel Leatherwood is a community development specialist with the Western Carolina University Center for Regional Development and one of the leaders of the museum effort.

The museum will focus on Swain County stories of national significance, including the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the creation of Fontana Lake, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the region’s natural history. A three-year planning process identified the stories to be highlighted, and work collecting oral histories has been completed. The same creative consulting firm that helped design the Museum of the Cherokee Indian was hired for the Swain museum initiative, Leatherwood said.

The museum would include interactive exhibits. For example, Fontana Lake exhibits might include a multi-media station where visitors could view images while listening to oral history recorded from Swain County families who were removed from their homes when the lake was created. Another kiosk might allow visitors to look up a genealogy database of Fontana family names, and another kiosk booth might allow visitors to record their own stories about Fontana Lake experiences and history.

Initial estimates put the museum at $1.5 million, Leatherwood said. A fundraising campaign will be launched this summer. Final drawings and plans for the museum will be unveiled over Memorial Day weekend in conjunction with Heritage Festival and the commemoration of the new streetscapes projects in downtown Bryson City.

The Cherokee Preservation Foundation provided $50,000 for planning, including a feasibility study, marketing plan and design work. Friends of Mountain History and WNC Community Foundation funded a feasibility study to evaluate the structural integrity of the third floor of the courthouse.

The quaint, domed historic courthouse has not housed court or county government functions since 1979 when a new justice center and county administration building was constructed around the corner.

It currently houses the Swain Senior Center and a county bus service. The Swain Senior Center could move out of the building at some point, freeing up the first floor for additional tourism efforts.