FEMALE UVA WISE (VO): This place has a heartbeat of its own.

MALE UVA WISE (VO): You just get a vibe that you're here at home.

FEMALE UVA WISE (VO): It's given me opportunities that I never thought I'd have.

That atmosphere is infectious.

It's a magic little place in the mountains.

MIGHTY MUSCADINE (VO): Made with the state fruit of North Carolina, "Mighty Muscadine" offers a line of superfruit supplements and juices made from the muscadine grape including the new Cellular Health Antioxidant Beverage, "Vinetastic."

More at mightymuscadine.com.

JOSH (VO): "Magic."

That's the word you hear over and over again from the people who call Floyd, Virginia home.

It's something you feel as soon as you take one step in this place.

A thread that runs through every corner, pulling together a culture that's quite special and unlike what I've seen in much of Appalachia.

Floyd is rich, not in the ways most people think of wealth, but in the stuff that really matters- clay, lumber, fresh mountain water, all of it springing from the land and flowing out into the world.

There's this harmony here, between the land, the farmers who work it, the businesses that thrive on it, and the artisans who take what's around them and show us the beauty in it.

Show us the beauty in ourselves.

In a world that constantly pressures us to fall in line, to conform, Floyd does the exact opposite.

It's the magic of the mountains, the art, the people.

Floyd is a place that says, 'Screw that.

Be who you are.'

And there's real power in that.

Sometimes, just being yourself is the most radical thing you can do."

I've heard it said where we are affects who we are.

Makes sense, right?

I've always believed you can't really understand yourself until you understand where you come from.

Hi, I'm Josh, and I'm hosting this series with PBS Appalachia to explore the places people still call home-their hometowns- and to uncover the stories that make them unique.

Hometowns is about exploring the communities that give America its character.

This season, we're going off the beaten path, on a journey from Virginia to Wyoming.

Now, don't get me wrong, many of these places have their flaws-warts and all- but if that's all you focus on, you're missing the bigger picture.

The raw, untamed beauty of the land and the depth and complexity of its culture- these are the things that speak to the heart of understanding what it really means to be an American.

It's a journey worth taking, trust me.

It was the 1960s.

Man, what a time to be alive.

You had this undeniable cultural revolution sweeping the world.

Music, art, politics- everything felt like it was exploding, pushing boundaries, questioning everything that came before.

The Beatles were in full swing, Hendrix was setting guitars on fire, and Woodstock- Woodstock was more than a concert; it was a declaration.

Kids from every corner of the world were shedding the conformity of their parents' generation, rejecting the status quo, and embracing this idea of freedom.

Freedom of expression, of lifestyle, of thought.

This was a time when people marched in the streets- civil rights, women's liberation, anti-Vietnam War protests.

The system was being challenged at every level.

It was chaos, and it was beautiful.

People could feel the power shifting, just a little, but enough to make you believe that maybe- just maybe-the world was going to change for the better.

But here's the thing: behind all that revolution, behind the counterculture and the liberation, there was a constant, gnawing tension.

The Cold War.

You can't talk about the 1960s without talking about that.

People forget how heavy it was to live with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over your head.

One minute you're tuning into The Ed Sullivan Show, the next, you're watching news about the Cuban Missile Crisis, wondering if the world's about to end.

It was surreal.

There was this insane contradiction.

On one side, the explosion of color, creativity, and hope.

On the other, the grim reality that two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, were locked in a nuclear arms race.

Every day was a delicate balance between living free and knowing it could all be over in the blink of an eye.

The 1960s were wild.

Wild and terrifying.

A decade of possibility and fear, and somehow, both coexisted.

And that-more than anything- defined the era.

And it was in this looming shadow of nuclear war that I'm told an article was written about Floyd, Virginia, that in the event of nuclear war, it was THE place to relocate.

Why?

Because the source of its water was within itself.

The water originates here and flows out of the county because of its position on the eastern continental divide.

And this was a calling card for back-to-the-landers and intentional communities.

Jayn Avery is one such person.

Drawn to Floyd, she came here with a different vision, along with a few like-minded folks, who built something unique- an intentional community.

A place where they didn't just live, but worked together, raised families together, and shared everything- from their skills to their resources.

It's a whole different way of living, one that's all about connection and collaboration.

In a world that's so often about doing it alone, they chose something else.

JAYN: There was something about this place.

That connection of all of us was always kind of amazing to us cause we hadn't experienced that in other places, we lived and yet we were all drawn here and then resonated on those levels.

So that is, what I guess I put it, magically.

(laughs) There was a farmer that had some land that we rented a house for a little while, and he said, "Oh, take this clay out of my land because it's--my cows keep falling in it.

(laughs) So, again I experimented with it, and it was a clay that I could use.

Coming down here, uh, we got to know there were some, what I call, intentional communities.

It was about living close to the land, and so the term we used back then was back-to-the-landers.

Society of people that were choosing not to live that way, that was described as having to be, uh, make more money and do more things.

JOSH (VO): Kathy and Sharon, the duo behind Blue Ridge Yurts here in Floyd, also had the same mindset- living simply, staying connected to the land.

They're keeping alive an ancient tradition- building yurts.

It's a craft that goes back millennia, but for them, it's more than just a business.

It's a way of life.

Stripping things down to the basics, embracing simplicity, and creating something that lets you live closer to nature.

In a world full of noise and complication, they're offering a different way to exist.

KATHY: Floyd is vibrant and comfortable and friendly.

SHARON: And Floyd's a healthy atmosphere.

All the water in Floyd originates in Floyd.

SHARON (OS): Genghis Khan, he lived in a yurt.

They still use them a lot in KATHY (OS): Mongolia.

SHARON (OS): Yeah.

KATHY: Yeah, so they've been around for thousands of years and were used by the nomadic tribes because they're so easy to move, like apparently, the women did all the construction.

JOSH (VO): A yurt- basically, it's a round, tent-like structure with a wooden frame, and a covering of felt or canvas.

Kathy and Sharon's team build these things right here in Floyd, made to order.

The circular design?

It's not just for looks.

It's sturdy, built to stand up against the unforgiving mountain winds.

Inside, it's cozy, welcoming, with the perfect mix of old-world tradition and as much modern comfort as one desires.

A simple way of living that feels like it belongs out here in the wild.

SHARON: I didn't know what a yurt was until I worked in Colorado for seven months a year for nine years.

And saw my first yurt there, Kathy and her husband came out for a cookout with us, and we set it up, and we said, "Hey, we could do this."

JOSH (VO): Kathy and Sharon aren't the only ones who found their way to Floyd, drawn in by the promise of something new, something different.

In a place that calls to the dreamers, the outliers, the ones looking to build, to create, to leave their mark.

To dig a little deeper into this history of this patch of Virginia and what's drawn people here for generations, I sat down with Judge Gino Williams- district court judge, former mayor, and a guy who knows Floyd like the back of his hand.

JUDGE GINO: The late 1700s, there were people here.

There were actually probably people here that legally weren't supposed to be here under the king's proclamation of nobody settling in the Blue Ridge, uh, because some of the original supposed explorers that came through here would find people up in the mountains, and it's just the natural progression of people.

This was a place you went to visit.

And once you came to visit, you know, because of the beauty of the place, uh, you tended to come back, you tended to stay, you tended to migrate here, and then you'd stay a while, and you'd move on, move west, and it's always been that way, that it's always been a place that people crossed over through and then moved on out farther west.

JAYNE: Just having that connection between the land and the--the local farms, because we were self-growers ourselves, wanted to grow all our own food and do it naturally.

And these mountains, they're not like the Rockies, you know, they're--they're real easy to live in.

But there is something about this area that, um, made us feel more at home.

When many of us newcomers came here, one of the few people that outwardly welcomed us was a local art teacher of the high school here.

The fact that she recognized the artist in all of us in our own way, and that, again, helped me honor that part, not only in me but in everybody I met.

And that's one of the beauties of Floyd.

JOSH (VO): Like Jayne said, these mountains aren't like the Rockies.

They're easy to live in.

Not too harsh, not too high, just livable.

But there's a power here, a quiet, ancient presence that whispers to you if you listen close enough.

I wanted to get a closer look for myself, so while filming on a separate documentary here in Floyd about preserving native grasslands, I climbed to the top of Buffalo Mountain.

And when I say "climbed," don't think ice axes and carabineers.

This isn't that kind of mountain.

But don't mistake its gentleness for weakness.

The people around here talk about Buffalo Mountain like it's alive.

And in a way, I get it.

Standing up here, you feel small.

Not insignificant, but humbled.

The wind whips around you, and the land stretches out below, spilling into Floyd County's patchwork of fields, woods, and farms.

It's not a place for the faint of heart or the faint of mind.

It's for those looking to slow down, to find some clarity, maybe even some peace.

There's a history here, too, older than the settlers who carved out their lives in these hills.

Native tribes used to gather here, and the mountain was a marker, a guidepost for navigating this rugged landscape.

You can still feel that- an untouchable connection to something that came long before us and something that'll be here long after we're gone.

This isn't the Rockies, no.

But from up here, you understand why people come to Floyd to build something lasting.

It's not easy, but it's good.

And sometimes, that's enough.

After spending some time with Kathy and Sharon, I got the chance to go behind the scenes, get a closer look at what makes their work so rooted in this place-literally.

They're sourcing local materials like lattice stripping made from poplar, grown right here in the surrounding woods.

There's a beauty in that, using what's around you, what's natural, what's local.

It's not just about building; it's about building with intention.

Crafting something that's a reflection of the land, the people, and the community.

That's real, that's authentic, and you can feel it."

BILL: In 2000, we decided to come down.

I got a full-time job with a construction company out of--out of Roanoke, and we started our life in Virginia, and we found Floyd from the newspaper, land for sale by owner.

In the meantime, I was building my business on the side.

I had my little shop up at the house, and I was building smaller projects, working all the time, working the evenings, working weekends, until I finally got to the business, to the point where we were a legit business now.

Now, I actually had hired an employee to help me during the day, when I wasn't there, and it just started exploding.

And we were on a few episodes of Salvage Dogs, um, with Black Dog Salvage, and that's where I had to quit my day job and start doing woodworking full time.

WILLIAM (OS/ON): Floyd is very unique.

It has individual traits that I just don't think you find in other places.

And I don't know what that is, you know?

Something in the hills, something in the people.

I don't know what that-- what causes that.

But if you--you know, doing what I do, I'm a CPA, and I'll have new clients come in every year.

And I always ask them, how'd you get here?

And they're like, well, you know the answers are, "We went to the jamboree on a Friday night.

We went to FloydFest."

And the other one is, "We were passing through and we're under the stoplight, and we said, 'This place needs to be checked out,' and before we left, we said, 'This one won't live.'"

BILL: And we had never been to Floyd before, and we came up Bent Mountain, and my wife's saying the whole time, "There's no way I'm going to live on top of this mountain."

And we found a great little piece of property here in Floyd and built our dream house.

I knew I couldn't do just woodworking and put four kids through college and--and survive.

So I knew if I was going to do this, I had to do it all.

I had to have the sawmills, the dry kilns.

And we needed to be able to do it all.

We need to be able to build cabinets, build tables, build, you know, make fireplace panels.

And when I was in construction, we were taking down a lot of these big, beautiful trees and old buildings, you know, for subdivisions or--or schools or whatever.

And I was always--it would always kill me to see that stuff go to waste.

So that's when I started salvaging old materials and urban timber, and that is what has built this unique business to what it is today.

WILLIAM (OS/ON): Floyd for, you know, half a mile, half a square mile size, and 450 people, I think, is the actual population, we're the envy of a lot of small towns.

And we're, you know, we always say it was in spite of us.

We knew when to get out of the way and let the private citizens jump in and kind of do what they wanted to do.

It's really worked out.

JOSH: I feel like there's a lot of, I guess, just pride in the community.

Ownership.

People care about it.

WILLIAM: It is, real sense of community, real sense of community pride, um, you know.

And there's just a huge entrepreneurial spirit.

JOSH (OS): Floyd seems, by all appearances, is pretty successful.

WILLIAM (OS/ON/OS): You know, I tell people too, it's kind of like Wizard of Oz.

It looks great on the road.

And then you get behind the curtain, you see how everybody's -- how hard everybody's got to work, the local economy, the tourism dollars that have come through.

It's given a lot of people a sustainable life.

I've been one of the biggest cheerleaders they've ever had for FloydFest.

I love it.

I think it's great.

I think it exposes our community.

It brings in, you know, not only the revenues and the dollars, and it brings notoriety to your community, and plus, it's a world-class event right here where we live, you know?

You don't have to go anywhere for it.

I can go there middle afternoon, sleep in a tent, come back home the next morning, take a shower, go do it all again.

I mean, it's, you know, that, to me, is pretty awesome.

JUDGE GINO: Music has always been here, and that's sort of the driving force of the tourism now.

But it's always been here, you know.

Even throughout the period when things weren't going so well, people played music.

It was one of the diversions.

These wonderful musicians that have come through here.

And it's--it's not just bluegrass, it's not just folk, it's not just religious music.

I mean, you--you get tied into the Yams From Outer Space and things like that, because those guys were here.

They were Floyd guys.

And, you know, it'--it's a whole long mixture of music that--that we've got.

It's not just one variety, and it's a lot of really talented people.

SAM: Floyd is a bit magic, and there's a lot of things in this county that are unexplainable in the sense of their--their beauty is remarkable and almost undefined, undefinable.

And I think that we see a reflection of that magic, I'm telling you, in FloydFest.

Well, I'll say it.

I'm a big Phish fan, and Phish at their festivals in the nineties, started in their-- putting art, involving art, like on-site art installations, into all they did.

And so it was kind of more expansive than just music at a festival.

That always spoke to me.

2002 is when it began.

It started as a World Music Festival.

So it was called Floyd County World Music Festival during that time.

quickly became FloydFest, um, the following year, and we've kind of kept the same motif througout all those years.

We're a hundred bands on about six or seven stages over five days.

We have four tenets.

We are family-friendly.

We are live music, craft, libations, outdoor adventure.

JOSH (OS): What kind of music does one find or experience at FloydFest?

SAM (OS/ON/OS): So, we started as World Music, right?

And then we kind of branched out.

And we almost said for many years we were like roots music, but truly, truly, you're gonna find something from every genre.

What we want is every day to make sense from beginning to end.

When you have 65, 70 concerts a day, it's pretty difficult to do, but it's pretty awesome when it all comes together.

So, for instance, Thursday is, like our jam band day.

We have more bluegrass, old time on Friday.

We have rock and roll Saturday, and then we have, like, new alt-country on Sunday.

We feel like we're blessed to carry the torch of the rich music in these mountains, in these hills, which is the origin of so many other genres of music.

You guys know that--if not every single one of them right, in this area, I feel very grateful, um, to be a part of it in that regard, and to be like a steward, or, you know, of--of bringing that to the next generation, if I don't play music.

So, I can tell you this, there's some magic in Floyd County itself, but that translates to FloydFest.

Kids can run free at the festival, kind of like everyone polices themselves.

It's not like a bigger festival, where you kind of have the riff raff around the edges.

Very safe place to be.

Kids and families feel very, very safe being there, and it really harbors this love for the arts.

We have kids that were in the womb or one years old at the first FloydFest, now playing at this FloydFest.

Isaac Haden is a great example.

He's getting famous by the day.

Mason Via, he's part of Old Crow Medicine Show.

He came here as a wee toddler.

Makes me feel old, but it's beautiful to see that transpire.

I used to say I didn't know what made us so different and special, but there really is intention behind every single thing we do.

You know, we joke about to be in this business, to be in the FloydFest business, you gotta get excited about porta-potties, uh, vendor placement, and stuff like that.

We want families-- we want our patrons not to have to wait for a toilet.

We want to have a clean toilet.

We want the families to be able to feed their kids when we want them--when they're--when they're hungry.

We want to create really beautiful campsites that have like character to them.

So it's a lot of care from our team that goes into it.

But then, of course, we joke, and it's actually true, this is the patron's festival.

When we decided to move from our old location, people came to us, what are you doing to my festival?

You know?

And it is their festival.

It's not our festival.

We do not book the acts that we listen to every single day.

We book the acts we know our patrons want to listen to every single day.

We want people to leave this festival with a new favorite band they've never heard of before.

That's very, very important to us.

I have worked a lot of music festivals across this country.

Our entire team has.

I've seen every different type of music festival.

I cannot stress this enough, there is something different about FloydFest, and it's not that we are bigger or better than any of these things.

It's just a vibe that the community creates that is otherworldly.

And I find that magic alive and well in Floyd County.

It's music, magic, and mountains.

JOSH (OS): Very pro-Floyd is what I-- SAM (OS): (interrupts) It is.

We are so Floyd.

It's unreal how Floyd we are.

We truly have put a lot of effort and thought and intention into creating a forever home for our patrons.

They deserve a sanctuary where they can escape the world, if you will, every single year, and come together.

They deserve a home where they can be themselves that you know, both sides of the aisle, we say, come here, and you can't tell about the divisions you normally have in life.

WILLIAM (ON/OS): In the past, well, you know, I mean, the world's kind of gone crazy in the past few years with politics and such.

Started to see a little bit of that creeping in and division and stuff.

But it's not--it's not near what it is in other communities.

I don't think.

That's the charm of the whole community of just, it's a live and let live and--and, you know, accepting and supportive, and it's just ideal.

SAM (ON/OS): They deserve this home.

In addition to that, Floyd County deserves to have a place, a sanctuary, a park such as Festival Park.

We want this to be a community resource, and we want to be a place where also our patrons can commune with it throughout the year.

Why does it have to only be five days?

Could this be a camping spot?

Could this be where families come up here to ride bikes for the first time, to hike together for the first time?

It's about creating that community, and it's about going for another 24 years, another 48 years.

That's very, very important to us.

This is truly a collective effort of Floyd from the top to the bottom.

We have Floyd Country Store, kind of the iconic Floyd Country Store.

Now it's come back to be a partner.

We worked with them for many years, many years ago.

But now they're back, and they're sponsoring our workshop, Port Stage.

We were a reflection of our community and really, hopefully, a reflection of the region, but on any given day of the week here at Festival Park, you're going to find different people with different awesome skills from Floyd County doing what they do best to bring this place a new life, and the patrons embody that they come year after year, and it's a family reunion.

JOSH (VO): A longtime resident of Floyd told me, 'Around here, you'll find everything- from dyed-in-the-wool Confederates to the kind of liberal ideologies that'd make Berkeley proud- and just about everything in between.'

And she wasn't wrong.

What I found was a unique culture, something that feels like it's stepped out of another time, yet somehow coexists and thrives on this striking diversity.

It's a place where people, businesses, and a community blend what was once a purely agrarian society with a deep passion for the arts.

That's the magic of Floyd.

A place where music, creativity, and these quiet, ancient mountains come together in a way that's hard to describe but impossible to forget.

FEMALE UVA WISE (VO): This place has a heartbeat of its own.

MALE UVA WISE (VO): You just get a vibe that you're here at home.

FEMALE UVA WISE (VO): It's given me opportunities that I never thought I'd have.

That atmosphere is infectious.

It's a magic little place in the mountains.

MIGHTY MUSCADINE (VO): Made with the state fruit of North Carolina, "Mighty Muscadine" offers a line of superfruit supplements and juices made from the muscadine grape, including the new Cellular Health Antioxidant Beverage, "Vinetastic."

More at mightymuscadine.com.