The Fabulous Brevard White Squirrel!
I shouldn't say this, but I've actually seen one up here in Cedar Mountain
People come to Transylvania County from all over to see our waterfalls, to enjoy the Brevard Music Center, and, especially, to spot our famous white squirrels. You can read on the city website, below, the legendary science about their rare squirrel classification and about how they got here in 1949.
At Highland Books in the 1990’s, we often told visitors to look for one across Broad Street on the Brevard College lawn. Other places at the time were up Jailhouse Hill at the Courthouse, and at Franklin Park. During slow times, we thought of making up a little White Squirrel Guide. We could sell it! Were we not a book store?
It was an exciting, creative time, surrounded by all those published books and magazines. Some of us who worked there were amused by the white squirrel characters that came to mind. A few large factories in our county had recently closed, and the town was just beginning to see a prosperous future in tourism. It was a good time for an amateur like me to depict what we saw as the fun in white squirrels (as opposed to making fun of them).
I still have the newspaper the white squirrel in the Activity Book is reading (or one like it). You might have been to Silvermont on East Main Street where the cache dispute was, on page 4.
Here are my small sculptures of the Gnawty brothers, about 2” high. I see the acorns they were holding have been lost over the years.
As I recall, the first of our white squirrel characters appeared in 1998. Charles Frazier was as interested in our area as we were, having been born in Asheville, and we displayed his book, On Cold Mountain, for over a year on our Best-Seller shelf. If some of his fans came in, we were happy to give them directions through Pisgah National Forest up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, where they could immediately park and view the real Cold Mountain.
We imagined how one of our own busy white squirrels might see an opportunity to greet the tourists up there.
For a while the Brevard White Squirrel was in a Transylvania Matching Game on the counter at O. P. Taylor’s toy store. I made small cloth bags to store the sets of tiles in.
White Squirrels appeared at #7 Arts on Main Street in little scenes.
They were even in the circus!
See why you should come visit Brevard?
Have you ever done note cards of the White Squirrel?
I remember those days. Fun thinking of things to do with the white squirrel for the tourists.
The bookmarks you made were a HIT! ( fluffy tails )
I still have the magnet with the Cold Mountain scene. Good laugh!
Then there was always the question how the white squirrel got HERE? Multiple theories.
Good memories.