The local town of Todd, North Carolina was featured in an article in the August 5, 2007 NY Times Magazine. Below is the article entitled "Fiddling for Dollars," written by Lee Smith.

When we bought our mountain cabin here two decades ago, Todd was almost a ghost town. Only the General Store (established 1914) had stayed open since Todd’s heyday back in the early 1900s.

But this summer evening, I find a traffic jam when I head into town (population only 50, but 900-plus in the area) to hear some old-time music at the store’s Friday jam, and check out the dance at the old Mercantile building.

I have to park way up Big Hill Road and walk back down along the New River. I have to elbow my way into the Mercantile, where the wooden dance floor is jammed with people of all ages, spiky-haired teenagers mixed in with tourists and old guys in overalls, everybody dancing up a storm to the music of Cecil Gurganus and his Laurel Creek String Band, spotlighting a 14-year-old fiddler, Meade Richter.

from the article by Lee Smith, who is the author, most recently, of the novel “On Agate Hill.”