5 Best Places to Shop in The North Carolina Mountains, North Carolina

This is the original Mast General Store, built in 1882–83, with plank floors worn to a soft sheen and an active, old-timey post office. Everything from running shoes to nails-by-the-pound are sold here. You can take a shopping break by sipping bottled "dope" (mountain talk for a soda pop) or a cup of coffee for 5¢ while sitting in a rocking chair on the store's back porch. An annex dating to 1909 is just down the road and now houses most of the store's outdoor-oriented clothing. Mast General Store has expanded to 10 locations, but this one still has the most authentic atmosphere.

This is the nation's oldest Native American co-op. It displays and sells items created by more than 250 Cherokee craftspeople. The store has a large selection of museum-quality baskets, masks, and wood carvings, some of which can cost hundreds of dollars.

The main shopping area in downtown Waynesville stretches several long blocks along Main Street, with a number of small boutiques, bookstores, antiques shops, restaurants, brewpubs, and a bakery. Side streets in this charming small town also offer shopping and dining. A few blocks away, Frog Level is an up-and-coming small dining and entertainment section in a former industrial area.

For hardware, firewood, locally grown vegetables, deli sandwiches, pumpkins for Halloween, snowboard and ski rentals, gourmet birdseed, and just about anything else you need, Fred's General Mercantile—half general store and half boutique—is the place to go. At 5,046 feet, it's billed as the highest-elevation general store east of the Mississippi River.

Inside three 1920s-vintage brick buildings, this mix of a small-town hardware store and gift shop, which opened in 1928, sells hard-to-find tools like scythes and push plows, along with cast-iron cookware, Case knives, and Radio Flyer red wagons.