STREAMS OF SUCCESS: Nantahala Outdoor Center retains a historic vibe while expanding its Whitewater empire.

• Author: Cool, Jennings

Early bypassers saw the Tote 'n Tarry as a simple roadside motel and gas station saddling a stretch of the Nantahala River in Swain County--surely one of the prettiest spots in North Carolina. The late Horace Holden Sr. saw the location as an opportunity to create what has become an iconic tourism venue set amid a national forest and a short drive from the eastern entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Holden grew up in Atlanta and became a canoeing enthusiast who started a popular summer camp along the Chattahoochee River near the Georgia capital in 1961. With a vision to entertain visitors with safe, exhilarating outdoor adventure, he purchased the North Carolina property in 1971. He asked his longtime Atlanta friends John Payson and Aurelia Turpin Kennedy to help start an outdoor retreat that would enable visitors to paddle through the river's rapids on 12- or 13-footlong rafts. In 1972, they opened Nantahala Outdoor Center, which attracted 800 rafting guests on the Nantahala and 400 about 45 miles away at the Chattooga River in north Georgia.

In the ensuing 50 years, the NOC has entertained visitors with about 7 million trips as they churn through large boulders in rafts typically carrying six or eight people and a guide. Last year, NOC guided approximately 120,000 rafting trips, the most in the past decade.

Today's NOC extends beyond the 500-acre Bryson City campus to include seven outposts on six rivers in four states. The business employs 150 full-time staff members, with staffing reaching 700 during the peak summer season.

It's a marked change from the early days when employees would prepare meals for guests, run a guide trip and clean a hotel room, all in the same day. Visitors then could paddle the Nantahala and Chattooga rivers, shop at a convenience store and grab a sandwich at River's End Restaurant. Employees wore all the hats and included the Kennedys' daughter Catherine, who started working at NOC at 16.

NOC debuted the same year as the release of Deliverance, a thriller about four Atlanta businessmen canoeing down a remote Georgia river. The movie, which was filmed on the Chattooga, won three Academy Awards and popularized whitewater rafting. Payson Kennedy was actor Ned Beatty's stunt double in the movie.

"Without Horace's visionary attitudes, the NOC would never have come into existence and my life, along with so many others, would certainly look completely different," says Catherine Kennedy, who lives on site...