State boundaries tend to complicate matters. This is extremely evident in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, where North Carolina and South Carolinas share a common boundary. This boundary comes together near Tryon, NC and Landrum, SC where Polk County (NC) borders both Spartanburg County and Greenville County (SC). Communities like Landrum that are near the northern edge of their county are dozens of miles (and a long-distance call) from their nearest SC county seats (the metropolises of Spartanburg and Greenville). Landrum is much closer to the North Carolina town of Tryon, which is only a few miles away.

Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians, Rutherfordton County was founded as a small farming community. The fertile ground and abundant streams and rivers made the location ideal for growing a variety of crops. That was - until the end of WWII, when the industrial revolution took hold in America - and in Rutherfordton. Manufacturing firms began to pop up across the County, and people left their farms to join the burgeoning manufacturing workforce. Over the following decades these manufacturing firms thrived and expanded, and were soon providing employment to more than half of the region's population.

And then, in the 1990s, almost as suddenly as it had come, manufacturing seemed to dissipate, ending the economic hay-day it had brought to the area. As the advent of globalization pushed firms to employ out-sourcing and off-shoring techniques as common means of business, the mills and manufacturing firms that had become the economic bedrock of Rutherfordton's economy shrunk, and then closed. Over the following twelve years, the economy of Rutherfordton retracted an alarming 30% - leaving 6000 people unemployed between 1995 and 2006.