The carriage pauses briefly on Upper Street. (MNJ photo/Juliana Walker)
There weren’t just cars in the streets of Bakersville and Spruce Pine this past weekend.
In an effort to support local businesses and provide local citizens with a fun activity over the Valentine’s holiday, the Mitchell County Chamber of Commerce sponsored horse-drawn carriage rides around both Bakersville and Spruce last weekend.
Chamber Director Patti Jensen said finding ways to support local businesses, especially during the ongoing pandemic, is at the forefront of what she does.
“Always at the top of mind is what is happening right now in regards to COVID, and obviously that is happening everywhere, but we’re focused on our community and the businesses here,” Jensen said. “While our businesses are showing great endurance, we just wanted to make sure we’re doing everything to help them and support them and continuing to remind our local community how important it is to support local business.”
In a brainstorming session with Spruce Pine Police Chief Bill Summerlin last month, Jensen had the idea of horse-drawn carriages.
“I was talking with Chief Summerlin, who has a big heart for the community, and we were thinking about how we could support the community and I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I went, ‘Oh, we could do carriage rides for Valentine’s day,’” Jensen said. “I thought it was kind of silly immediately, but he told me it was a great idea.”
Summerlin was on board, so Jensen called Joe Glenn, the general manager at Springmaid Mountain Resort where he offers carriage rides, who told her he’d be happy to help in any way.
Jensen said things moved pretty quickly from there. She contacted area businesses to see if they would stay open late, got in touch with Spruce Pine Main Street to get them on board and thought up how people could support local businesses rather than just showing up to go for a carriage ride.
“So we thought, rather than charge for the carriage rides, we thought it would be great for people to just show a receipt from a local business,” Jensen said. “That way we could encourage people to pop in the shops and eat out for Valentine’s day.”
Jensen decided on requiring a $20 or more receipt from a local business to go on a carriage ride. The Bakersville event was held Friday, Feb. 12 from 5-7:30 p.m. while Spruce Pine’s event was at the same time on Saturday, Feb. 13.
The weather was cold and wet for both nights, but people like the Jones family still showed up, receipts in hand, for their special ride around town.
“We’re really excited,” April Jones said as they arrived for their carriage ride. “We thought we were going to miss it because we had just ordered food, but we’re here and ready to go.”
Jensen said she was happy people showed up despite the poor weather conditions and said they hope to hold more carriage rides for other events in the future.
“We hope to be able to work with businesses on events like this more in the future,” Jensen said. “I think that our community wants to support these businesses, even if it’s easy to forget to check local, so events like this remind people that they’re here and they need to be supported.”