It’s become common for Newton County residents to see roads blocked off with filming equipment and tents set up hosting production company personnel, or to turn on their televisions and see the Covington Historic Courthouse or other familiar homegrown sights.

For visitors to Newton County, those sights are familiar as well.

However, the locations are known as Mystic Falls, Sparta or other towns depicted in Cannonball Run, Dukes of Hazzard, Prisoners and other movies.

And as we have seen there are plenty of people who come to Covington and Newton County. Along with those visitors, come their tourism dollars. Daily, visitors spend money within Newton County at hotels, restaurants stores, and other businesses adding to Newton County’s tax revenue and helping to build on a burgeoning industry here — tourism.

This is a great source of revenue for our county. All the money is coming from outside sources to remain here and be put to use for to help boost our governments, infrastructure and education.

Thursday, the Covington Newton County Chamber of Commerce played into that tourism angle, by cutting a ribbon on a newly renovated Convention and Visitors Bureau. The welcome center now looks like the lobby of a movie theater, featuring posters and memorabilia of the movies and television shows that helped make Covington “The Hollywood of the South.”

This was great to see.

It was not only a sign of Covington thinking progressively in using one of the city’s aspect to help boost finances and revenue, but it was also a great sign of what state officials think of the city.

Several state tourism officials were in Covington Thursday to help re-introduce the visitors center, showing that we are bringing in enough money to warrant such support.

We hope Covington continues to be open to the idea of filming in the “Hollywood of the South,” and along with it tourist will continue to enjoy our restaurants, stores and hospitality.