America’s rural byways and backroads are worth traversing for their historical treasures. Far off the beaten path in unincorporated Valle Crucis, North Carolina, population just over 100, is the Mast General Store. In this pastoral setting of farms and livestock fields, set against the Appalachian mountains of Watauga County, not much has changed in 142 years.
The road in front of the old store was once dirt instead of asphalt, but the store’s aged charm still radiates in the off-kilter way the clapboard structure has settled, the rusted screen doors, and the old Esso red gas pump near the front entrance. Rural communities relied heavily on such small retail stores, which sold everything for families from “the cradle to caskets.”
