Unassuming Icon After All These Years, Roger E. Reedy Trading Post Closes Down, Merchandise To Damascus

By Jesse Wood

Aug. 13, 2014. After years of selling twig furniture, birdhouses and wood sculptures off of U.S. 321 in between Boone and Blowing Rock, the Roger E. Reedy Trading Post, which unassumingly became a High Country icon over the past decades, has closed down.

For the past few weeks, tractor trailers have been hauling away the goods to Damascus, Va., where an auction company named A-OK Auction Company will sell the merchandise it purchased.

So far about seven truckloads a week have been hauled away, including more than 20,000 birdhouses. On Tuesday afternoon, workers were on the property throwing the wooden merchandise into trucks and burning whatever was rotting, broken or unsellable.

“Whatever we aren’t taking, we’re burning,” one of the workers said.

Randy Widener, owner of one of the tractor trailers, said that goods weren’t the only things found in all of the rubble on the shelves and inside the structures on the lot. Widener mentioned that six baby copper heads and roughly 90 cats, which were taken by the Watauga County Humane Society, were found amidst the furniture and birdhouses.

“They are coming back to put out traps [and catch some more],” Widener said.

Reedy, who now has health problems, according to owners of the property, has leased the roadside lot from Truman Critcher, 85, who was born in Sugar Grove and resides in the Bamboo area, for years.

“It’s been family land for 200 years,” Critcher said, adding that he had no immediate plans for the property except for it to be cleaned up.

While Critcher didn’t say exactly when Reedy started leasing the property to sell his goods, he responded, “Before you was born.”

A Google search of the Roger E. Reedy Trading Post only turned up one worthwhile post. An article titled, “My Heart’s in the Highlands Western North Carolina,” written by Pat Mestern, mentioned the trading post among other notable attractions in the area.

“One of the most unusual retail outlets is located on Highway #321 between Boone and Blowing Rock,” Mestern wrote. “Roger E. Reedy Trading Post is the ultimate destination for twig furniture, bird houses and natural wood “sculptures”. Their fairy houses are charming. Eclectic collection! Great place to shop for decorative, whimsical lawn and conservatory items.”

See pictures of the move below:

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