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Let’s take a trip to Switzerland. But let’s never leave the mountains of the South! And discover the degree of Swiss culture still alive today.
You may want to yodel and grab some Swiss cheese.
Or maybe you just want some history of how the Swiss settlers came to found such towns as Newbern, Virginia, a Pulaski County place that takes its “new” name in reference to the old “Bern” of Switzerland. Virginia’s Newbern got its start in 1810 as a wagon-road stop mid-way between Christiansburg and Wytheville. Yet, today, this historic village bears little, if any, Swiss connections.
Unlike Helvetia, West Virginia, or Gruetli, Tennessee.
Such Swiss villages are scattered across the mountains. And virtually every state appears to have one—or two. North Carolina boasts both Little Switzerland, a speck of a town along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Swiss Mountain Village, a resort community at Blowing Rock.
Kentucky’s Die Kolony Bernstadt, near I-75, is a Laurel County location which thrived in the 1880s—with its Swiss Colony Church and the promise of coal-mining jobs. Hundreds of families settled in the area. And the immigrants flourished in making wine and cheese. But, over time, the village never grew much beyond its beginnings.
Just like Helvetia, West Virginia, or Gruetli, Tennessee.
Why, just come along—and see the Swiss for yourself …
Little Switzerland, North Carolina
It’s a Sunday morning in October, and the leaves are in bright bloom, only a few days before Halloween, at the Alpine Inn. Here, my wife and I order the Full Alpine, a fruit-and-bread breakfast nearly as breathtaking as the view from the porch of this establishment in Little Switzerland, North Carolina.
Alpine Inn advertises its “Free Sunrise.” And some guests, says owner Susan Lough, come simply to watch the sun rise and shine with a fiery glow. “It’s quiet,” Lough says. “There are no distractions. We have this beautiful view. How can they not want to be here?”
This inn first welcomed guests in 1929, nearly at the dawn of the Great Depression—and nearly 20 years after the birth of Little Switzerland.
This unincorporated town owes its origin to a real estate development by Judge Heriot Clarkson, who founded it as a summer colony. Clarkson opened the Switzerland Inn in 1910 after first riding into the area on the back of a mule in 1909.
Today, what’s dubbed “The Jewel of the Blue Ridge Parkway” pops out at BRP Milepost 334. “And it’s a magical community,” says Susan Jackson Mills, the recently retired executive director of the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway. “The view truly reminds me of my travels in Switzerland.”
Little Switzerland, still, remains very much a seasonal destination—with the Alpine Inn shutting down at the end of October and the nearby Switzerland Cafe turning off its oven just after the fall leaf season.
“The parkway closes, and it starts to snow,” says Ann Kernahan, the cafe’s co-owner. “Everybody closes up their houses and goes home. It’s like a beach town.”
Then comes Good Friday, and the season rises again—just like the glorious sun off the deck of the Alpine Inn.
Besides breakfast at the Alpine Inn, our stay in Little Switzerland included a spacious suite at the Switzerland Inn plus dinner in the Chalet Restaurant, tasting trout and asparagus plus steak and potatoes.
You can buy Swiss cheese in Little Switzerland.
“But I don’t think that’s something we promote,” Kernahan says.
The scenery is more like it.
“It’s easy to get a good view of most anything—in other words, the juxtaposition of one mountain to another,” Kernahan says. “You can be almost anywhere and see a beautiful view.”
It’s cool, too. “You don’t need air conditioning up here,” Kernahan says.
Red-and-white Swiss flags fly among the A-frames at the sprawling Switzerland Inn grounds, within walking distance of the Switzerland Café and the Little Switzerland Post Office.
But hold the cocoa: No one appears to have just dropped out of a Swiss Miss commercial.
“We don’t play the Swiss game at all. It’s a little too tacky for us,” Kernahan says. “We do have Swiss folks who come up here looking for that sort of thing. We do have Swiss and Germans who have bought houses here. But it’s not really a German or Swiss town as much as it’s an old town that kind of looks European. And it has a great name.”
alpineinnnc.com
switzerlandcafe.com
switzerlandinn.com
visitlittleswitzerland.com
