Campbell, John C., Folk School Historic District

Set in the valley of Brasstown Creek along the Cherokee-Clay County line, this 366-acre campus is the home of the John C. Campbell Folk School, a working farm and school founded in 1925. Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler established it on the model of Scandinavian folk high schools, aiming to keep a contented farming population on the land and to build improvement on local folk culture. Local farmers donated land, cash, materials and labor. The oldest building is a turn-of-the-century farmhouse that served as the first classroom. Keith House, begun in 1926, became the main administrative and dormitory building. A Danish farm manager, Georg Bidstrup, and a Belgian engineer, Leon Deschamps, oversaw construction of half-timbered and stone barns, shops and houses with a distinct European character. Two nineteenth-century cabins were rebuilt in 1926 as a log house museum, possibly the first community effort in North Carolina to preserve rural vernacular architecture. The school still teaches folk arts today.