Few places in the United States can compare to the natural beauty and grace of Western North Carolina, a combination of picturesque mountain ranges, rolling foothills, and lush valleys. At the turn of the century, the visual splendor of the Appalachians and clean mountain air drew thousands upon thousands of visitors, including a large number of photographers, to the region's many health resorts, hotels, hiking trails, and small towns. Like explorers of old, these photographers went out into the North Carolina wilderness carrying their bulky photographic contraptions and glass-plate negatives...

Carefully pieced together by author Stephen E. Massengill, Around Southern Pines: A Sandhills Album provides a fascinating and unique insight into life in the Sandhills area of North Carolina from the arrival of postcard photographer E.C. Eddy in 1907 to his retirement in 1945. The work includes not
only portraits of such famous Americans as Lincoln Beachey, Gutzon Borglum, James Boyd, Annie Oakley, Donald Ross, and Walter J. Travis, but also views of ordinary citizens at work and play in Moore County. Chronicling such events as parades, fox hunts, golf tournaments, fairs and carnivals,...