by The Foxfire Museum in Mountain City, Ga., must have one of the most unique origin stories I’ve ever heard.
In 1966, an English teacher at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School created a magazine with his students, researching and then publishing stories and traditions from the southern Appalachia region in which they lived.
The magazine was called Foxfire, named after the glow-in-the-dark fungus that grew in the local hills. Students interviewed local people about their history, traditions, crafts, skills and culture, and also how their lifestyles had changed over the course of their lives.
The magazine turned into a best-selling book, and in 1974 book royalties were used to purchase land, which eventually became the museum it is today.
You can walk through history via 25 historic log structures dating from the 1820s to the 1840s, each with various artifacts inside representing life in the mountains.
The museum is also a repository for more than 2,000 hours of interviews on audio tape, 30,000 pictures, and hundreds of hours of videotape.
At various times there are artisans on-site plying their trade; during our visit we saw a weaver at work and a luthier making custom-made guitars out of everyday objects.
Today there a dozen books in the Foxfire series, along with companion books, and Foxfire Magazine has been in continuous production since 1967, currently publishing two issues each year.
By 1998, 37 U.S. school systems were using the Foxfire educational philosophy in their classrooms.
Neat place!