Lawless

Ellenora Barker stands by her man. When her husband, Andy, announced he wanted to build his very own old-fashioned Western town, she told him it sounded like a great idea.And when he sold his share of a successful construction company and moved the family from their comfy life in Charlotte to a remote and overgrown stretch of land in North Carolina’s Brushy Mountains, Ellenora went along with it.

And when Andy built a tiny shack next to the horse stables for the Barker clan to sleep in, including two little kids, she never complained.
“I tell these young girls today that they have to put their husbands first,” said Ellenora, 88.  “I go along with what my husband wants.”

Today, some 56 years after they left Charlotte, Ellenora is still queen to Andy’s king, and they preside over a surreal little town called Love Valley, population 117.

About an hour northwest of Charlotte in Iredell County, Love Valley looks like an Old West film set. But everything is real, including the piles of horseshit along Main Street, the saloons, the blacksmith shop and the general store, as well as the residents’ desire to keep the town vital yet still authentic.

It’s a goal that has met with mixed results over the years, and is further threatened by the fact that Andy and Ellenora, the town’s founders—its heart and soul—won’t be around much longer.

“As long as they’re still alive, Love Valley will be OK,” said Iredell County Sheriff’s Deputy Tommy Adams, who helps keep order in the town. “But when they go, it might be in trouble.”
But Love Valley has a savior, one who is just as comfortable atop a horse as she is a surfboard. Although her return to Love Valley in 2005 was marred by tragedy, she’s determined to stay there and “finish what her grandpa started.”

Roughing It
Driving past cornfields, churches and trailer parks, I spot the sign for Love Valley, the “cowboy capital of the south.” Soon the pavement ends altogether, and I pull into a spot in front of Andy’s Hardware. A little convoy of horseback riders saunters past, and the one leading the group gives me a squinty nod hello.

Andy’s Hardware is a classic, old-fashioned country store, with a concrete floor and stone walls. Just about every square inch is overflowing with a cluttered array of tools, plumbing and electrical supplies, rakes, sledgehammers, generators, paint and just about anything else you can think of.

Near the front of the store, kicked back in a tattered office chair, is the man himself, Andy Barker. Decked out in jeans, a blue flannel shirt and big white cowboy hat, he’s holding court among a group of visitors and townspeople.

Andy, 86, is a notorious flirt, given to hugging and kissing just about any female in his vicinity, especially if they’re young and pretty.
He introduces the teenaged girl sitting next to him as his girlfriend, and she giggles and blushes at the joke.
Andy owns about 800 acres around Love Valley, through which some 250 miles of horse trails wind and twist. At one time he owned over 1,800 acres, but “it was just too damn much,” he said.

Over the years he’s sold parcels to a select number of residents and business owners. “I figured if they owned the businesses they’d have to keep it open,” he said. “Otherwise they’d starve.”

As a young man, Andy made a bundle working as a contractor in Charlotte. He jointly owned JA Construction Company with his father and remodeled department stores across the Southeast, including Belk.

After joining the Army and fighting in World War II, Andy came back home to Charlotte and married his high school sweetheart, Ellenora.
At 29 he’d had enough of the construction business, and decided it was time to fulfill his life-long dream of building his own town.

Andy sold his share of the construction company, and with their 6-year-old daughter, Tonda, and 2-year old son, Jet, the Barkers pulled up stakes and in 1954 moved into a tiny one-room shack attached to a horse stable in what is today Love Valley.

“We really roughed it,” Ellenora remembered. “But I was a country girl so I didn’t mind.”

Using construction crews from JA Construction Company, Andy invested about $200,000 to build the town. He envisioned a type of utopia that combined his love of cowboys and Christianity.

In fact, the first structure he built was the Love Valley Presbyterian Church, which still has services every Sunday. This was followed by a rodeo arena and post office. The town was incorporated in 1963.

Hippie Invasion
Over the years, Andy and Ellenora slowly developed the town into an offbeat attraction for horse lovers and hell raisers. During the summer, the population balloons to about 500 full-time residents, and weekends and holidays, especially Halloween, are bustling with tourists.

Word around town is that while Andy grabs the spotlight – he was first elected mayor in 1965, a position he’s held on and off ever since – it’s been Ellenora working behind the scenes that has made it all happen. Or as long-time resident Charlie Nance puts it: “Andy is the bullshitter, and Ellenora is the one who makes it work.”
In addition to the rodeo, Love Valley’s other big attraction is its downtown, which is essentially a dirt road lined with saloons, a general store, tack shop, blacksmith shop, gift shops, riding stables and hitching posts.

No cars are allowed downtown, and visitors and residents alike get around via horseback and horse-drawn buggies. There are several cabins and rooms for rent, as well as RV parks and about a half-dozen campsites scattered around the property.

In the early days, the town attracted equine enthusiasts who came to see the rodeos and take advantage of the horse trails that cut through miles of deep woods. Andy said that over the years he’s hosted everyone from ambassadors and governors to senators and musicians, and even claims he went horseback riding with Lyndon Johnson.

Nance, originally from Mt. Mourne near Mooresville, moved to Love Valley with his father in the early 1960s when he was 12. “ I could basically run wild,” he said.
He wasn’t prepared for just how wild things got in July 1970 during the Love Valley Rock Festival. Organized by Andy, the three-day event drew more than 100,000 people, who flocked to the area to see more than 40 bands, including the Allman Brothers Band, Sly and the Family Stone and British singer-guitarist Terry Reid, along with a host of local and regional acts.

“It was the biggest thing to hit Iredell County, and also the most detrimental,” said Nance. “People around here had never seen hippies. They didn’t understand all that sex, drugs and rock and roll stuff. They were skinny dipping and rolling around in the mud.”

As for Andy, he has to be coaxed to even talk about the festival. “I hated that cockeyed thing,” he said. “That was my first and last rock festival. One cured me.”
He explained that his daughter and her boyfriend, enamored over the Woodstock Festival in 1969, kept talking about how they wanted to go to a big rock show. “I said, ‘Hell, I’ll just have one.’ That’s the kind of fella I am. We had one hell of a crowd. We were bigger than Charlotte for a couple of days.”

The festival also ushered in a groovy new era at Love Valley. Many concertgoers decided to hang around after the show, and some bought land next to Love Valley and started a little commune.

“We called it Weird Acres,” said Nance. “They lived in teepees, tents and tree houses. It was something else.”

As the town grew, so did its unusual reputation. In 1986 Love Valley’s leathersmith, Joe Ponder, appeared on the David Letterman TV show showcasing his ability to pull a car and lift a 606-pound pumpkin with only his teeth. His feats of strength earned him a place in the “Guinness Book of World Records” and Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

Love Valley’s unique setting has also proven irresistible to filmmakers. Last year, students from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem filmed “Dying from Home” in Love Valley, about a Western outlaw. And a group of Charlotte-based directors, writers and actors recently wrapped on “Devil’s Crossing,” an independent horror movie in which the “Western and zombie genres collide.”

Nance has lived in Love Valley on and off over the years, but moved there for good in 2003 when he married Beth, who serves as the town manager.
The two first met at a rodeo in Charlotte in 1999. Charlie was riding bucking horses and working as a rodeo clown, and Beth, originally from Walhalla, South Carolina, was working as a paramedic on a sports medicine team.

Together they manage the Love Valley Arena, which hosts the rodeos and horse shows. Moreover, the couple is part of ongoing efforts to return Love Valley to its family-friendly roots.