The theme of the center’s educational outreach will be the Twentieth Century. This focus will allow an interpretive program that will span the log cabin stereotype of the 19th Century to the globalization begun in the 21st Century. Periods of time preceding and following the 20th Century will also provide touchstone education and context to Center visitors.

The place-based programs will address a variety of topics including the agricultural, industrial, historical, cultural, and natural heritage of the region from 1900 through 1999:

• From horsepower to steam power to internal
  combustion engines
• Building the Blue Ridge Parkway
• From home-made to tailor-made to ready-made
  clothing
• Travel challenges and constraints
• From housecalls to heart transplants
• Chestnut blight, mining and smelting, tobacco
  growth and decline, and the loss of textile jobs
  overseas
• Two World Wars
• The Great Depression