3 Best Shopping in The North Carolina Mountains, North Carolina

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.

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.