High Country Dashboard

This chart shows Blue Ridge Parkway monthly recreation visits (NPS Stats). The coverage is Blue Ridge Parkway, whole-parkway total (469 miles, NC + VA). Source: National Park Service, NPS Stats. Source: National Park Service, Visitor Use Statistics.

Blue Ridge Parkway recreation visits carry their full history from 1979 onward, read from the source series rather than the panel grid, which is trimmed to 2010-01.

Parkway visits are the whole 469-mile parkway across NC and VA — the calibration series for the High Country, not a measurement of it. The Watauga station count is the local one, and it is vehicles, not people.

This chart shows High Country listings-weighted average occupancy (9 markets, STR market data). The coverage is High Country, NC — 9 STR markets: Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, Beech Mountain, Sugar Mountain, Seven Devils, Vilas, Valle Crucis, Deep Gap. Market data from a commercial short-term-rental data provider.

Market-level aggregates only; per-listing data is never ingested. The High Country aggregates are listings-weighted across the nine markets. History starts 2021-08 (the endpoint's trailing 60-month window).

Per-market ADR, RevPAR, and active-listing counts are carried alongside the nine-market aggregate, under the same source and licence terms.

This chart shows Watauga-area total ABC sales: sum of tracked boards' total sales (Boone + Blowing Rock, currently) for whichever reported that month. The coverage is Boone & Blowing Rock ABC Boards, Watauga County, NC. Source: North Carolina ABC Commission. Source: North Carolina Department of Revenue.

Mixed-beverage sales are the bar and restaurant channel and track visitor traffic most directly; retail is the store channel.

The sales-and-use-tax distribution has real interior gaps where NCDOR did not publish the county's row — a missing month is a missing observation, never a zero.

The occupancy-tax series the Tourism Development Authority collects is not here; it is not public data and no agreement covers it yet.

This chart shows NAICS 72 (accommodation & food services) employment, private ownership. The coverage is Watauga County, NC + Avery County, NC. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW. Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

QCEW publishes quarterly; employment is spread across the quarter's three months and the average weekly wage is the one quarterly figure repeated across them. No county data before 2014 Q1, and BLS revises.

QCEW's monthly employment level is the count in the pay period including the 12th — a resort's mid-to-late-December ski-season hiring that lands after the 12th surfaces in January's count, not December's.

Unemployment is BLS LAUS, not seasonally adjusted — the tourism seasonality this panel tracks is left in.

This chart shows Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), Watauga County, NC — all-homes, mid tier (0.33-0.67), smoothed, seasonally adjusted. The coverage is Watauga County, NC. Data: Zillow Research (zillow.com/research/data). Data: Redfin, redfin.com/news/data-center.

ZHVI is smoothed and seasonally adjusted: directional housing context, not a transaction count. Redfin's trailing one to two months are provisional and get revised as sales record.

This chart shows Weekly retail gasoline price, Lower Atlantic (PADD 1C), regular grade, all formulations — monthly mean of weekly EIA survey. The coverage is Lower Atlantic (PADD 1C): FL, GA, NC, SC, VA, WV. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration. Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Directional context, not local measurement. These are national and regional series describing the environment High Country visitors travel from; none of them measures the High Country.

This chart shows Temperature anomaly vs. the 1991-2020 same-calendar-month normal. The coverage is Boone, NC -- station USC00310982 (BOONE 1 SE, NC US, 36.21395, -81.64563). Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, GHCN-Daily.

NOAA GHCN-Daily station observations (Boone 1 SE, station USC00310982), aggregated monthly. US-government public domain, so no attribution restriction applies to these figures.

The temperature anomaly is against the station's own 1991-2020 same-calendar-month normal; a snow day is >= 1.0 cm of snowfall. A station misses days, so each element of a month is reported only when at most five days are missing for it.

Anomalies and small counts should be compared as level differences, not percentages.

This chart shows Monthly average daily traffic, continuous count station 0R9401. The coverage is Watauga County, NC — continuous count station 0R9401. Source: NCDOT Traffic Survey Group (via NCDOT ArcGIS AADT publications and FHWA TMAS).

One continuous count station (0R9401, US 221/321 on the Boone-Blowing Rock leg), established 2015 — no earlier history exists for the county. Historical months via FHWA TMAS; current-year months via NCDOT's TCDS portal (same measurement, matches TMAS exactly on overlap), so this series runs within a month of the present.