When Peter Koch ’97 MA grew up in Chapel Hill, N.C., one set of his grandparents lived in Pennsylvania. Visiting them meant trips to Civil War battlefields. His other set lived in England. That meant trips to castles and Roman sites. 

“Our mission is really to provide cultural and history outreach and professional services for the betterment of the region.”

But Koch eventually turned his professional attention to the history of his home state. He’s the interim director of Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center, whose mission is to celebrate southern Appalachia’s cultural history. “Our mission is really to provide cultural and history outreach and professional services for the betterment of the region,” Koch says. “We’re also trying to train the next generation of museum [and] public history professionals.”

Koch, now in his 28th year at the center, directs educational outreach mostly to the people of Haywood, Macon, Swain and Jackson counties, along with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. That includes visiting K–12 schools around western North Carolina, helping schools with fall festivals and holding artifact activities. He also helps to get Traveling Trunks — trunks that hold reading materials on subjects including quilting, settler life and crafts of the Cherokee people — to those schools. And he works with Western Carolina students and professors in varying disciplines, from anthropology to entomology, to feature their research at the center. 

Part of Koch’s job is also to work with his team to develop exhibits in the center’s two galleries. Last fall’s exhibit, which resulted from a class project, displayed the history of women’s sports at Western Carolina, and currently, the center features an exhibit about moonshine. “We’re not talking about stereotypes,” he says. “We’re talking about moonshining, sure, but the economics of moonshine and the process of moonshine.”

Koch, 58, helps direct and organize Western Carolina’s Mountain Heritage Days, an annual weeklong fall celebration of mountain culture. That event has been happening for more than five decades and features crafts, music and dance, like clogging. The event signifies Western Carolina University’s mission in the North Carolina mountains. 

“We’re now a comprehensive, rare regional institution,” he says. “We’re going to try and provide professional opportunities and growth for the people who live here.”

---

Tell Us What You Think

Do you have a personal connection to this story? Did it spark a memory? Want to share your thoughts? Send us a letter, and we may include it in an upcoming issue of NC State magazine.

---