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LOUD cheers to Council Tool!   You make us proud!

Columbus County, N.C.  is unlike any other county in the world. By choosing to support locally owned businesses, you help maintain Columbus County’s diversity and distinctive flavor.

2. Community Well-Being

Locally owned businesses build strong neighborhoods by sustaining communities, linking neighbors, and by contributing more to local causes.

3. Local Decision Making

Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy

Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent at national chains. When shopping locally, you simultaneously create jobs, fund more public services through sales tax, invest in neighborhood improvement and promote community development.

5. Job and Wages

Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6. Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7. Public Benefits and Costs

Local stores  require comparatively little infrastructure and make efficient use of public services.

8. Environmental Sustainability

Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

9. Competition

A marketplace of hundreds of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

10. Product Diversity

A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Adapted and reprinted with permission of  The Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Discover the scary side of Columbus at our

Halloween Party!

...an ancient JackOLantern of Christopher Columbus

When? – October 31 8:00pm til 11pm (the bewitching hourrrr…)

Where? – The Columbus County Arts Council

What? - It’s been ages since we had a grown-up Halloween Party. So Sally Mann and Lisa Richey are joining forces to make one happen. You can expect music, snacks, wine/beer (as long as it lasts), java from Mae Coffee Shop, other spooky soft beverages, play, dancing and PRIZES for the best, most creative and most inappropriate costumes!

PLEASE, SPREAD THE WORD and invite your friends!

Why? – to have FUN and benefit our community. All proceeds from this gig will go to the Greater Whiteville Chamber of Commerce and Discover Columbus First.

Suggested (per person) donations are: $20 (if you’re in costume); $30 (if you don’t feel like dressing up); and $50 (if you want to just stay home and send a donation!).

The fine print (for our accountants) – If you want this to be a business deduction, make your check payable to Greater Whiteville Chamber of Commerce (GWCC). For individual tax deductions, make your check to Whiteville Improvement Association. These individual contributions of more than $10 per person are considered tax deductible, as allowed by law. Yep, receipts are available.

Don’t forget to join us in Tabor City for a celebration of the delicious orange tuber we call “yam”.  Events are happening all week with the main festival day being Saturday October 24th.  Parade begins at 10:00am in downtown Tabor City.  Be sure to check out the NC Yam Festival schedule of events.  For more information, please call 910-377-3012.

A demo derby is the kind of event that everyone should attend at least once in his or her lifetime. Watch in delight as drivers in  junk cars try to disable their four-wheeled opponents through nearly any means necessary.

Get there early for a good seat, and go hungry. The sausage dogs and soft drinks are the best deal on the fairgrounds.

The derby takes place Friday (Oct. 17) and Saturday (Oct. 18) starting at 7pm. For more information, visit their website.  Buckle your seat belt! You’re in for a good time.

Fall weather is finally here in Columbus County!  There are chrysanthemums and pretty fall-colored bows everywhere you look.  The season changes are one of the things I love most about southeastern NC. 

Fall also means lots of fun community events such as the Columbus County Fair, Oct. 13-18, 39th Annual Waccamaw Siouan Pow Wow in the Buckhead community, Oct. 16-17, the NC Yam Festival at Tabor City, Oct. 22-23, and the NC Pecan Festival in Whiteville, November 7.  Be sure to check out all these fun events!

If you’re in Columbus County  - there’s no need to be bored!

You can start off with yoga at Earth Element.

Then have some coffee, tea or a great (and healty!) smoothie at Mae Coffee Shop.

Then swing by the Columbus County Farmers’ Market to stock up on locally grown veggies and visit with all of your friends who are also there.

After that you can gather your provisions at the many wonderful Columbus County Merchants.

And then maybe visit the Lake Waccamaw State Park.

THEN visit the North Carolina Museum of Forestry.

And don’t forget to explore Tabor City as they prepare for the  2009 Yam Festival!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO  need to the bored in Columbus County!

Click here to find out more!

Centuries ago the swampy land along the southeastern North Carolina coast became home to West African slaves brought here to turn marshy fields into thriving rice plantations.  Along with knowledge of how to grow the crop, they brought language, food traditions and craftsmanship that strongly connected them in this foreign land. These people called themselves Gullahs or Geechees.

Today, however, few residents in our area have any knowledge of this culture.  But the National Park Service is trying to change that.  Designated by Congress in 2006, the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor extends 40 miles inland from Wilmington, NC to Jacksonville, Fl.  In North Carolina, the corridor includes New Hanover County, Brunswick County, and the majority of Columbus County and was created in hopes of bringing recognition to the area’s Gullah roots and preserving the endangered African history. 

Along the corridor, sites will be designated as historically significant based on their representation of the Gullah culture.  The difficulty lies in identifying the sites.  If you have information on Columbus County sites that represent the Gullah culture, please contact Jennifer Long, Columbus County Tourism Director at 910-653-2818.