Rural communities throughout North America rely on entrepreneurship for economic sustenance strategies. Accordingly, it is important to understand the attributes of rural communities that foster tourism entrepreneurship so that these supportive attributes can be nurtured and expanded. Using an online survey method, this study explores the characteristics of the communities and residents in the rural western North Carolina Appalachian Mountain region in the United States, and the relationship of those characteristics to tourism entrepreneurship in the region. It was found that communities with a high number of ‘tourism package’ elements contained significantly more tourism entrepreneurs. No significant relationship was found between entrepreneurial climate and number of tourism entrepreneurs. The relationships between various entrepreneurial traits of residents and the supply of tourism entrepreneurs were found to be significant; the higher the level of business skills, entrepreneurial mindset, networking skills, risk-taking traits, and “can-do” attitude of residents, the higher the supply of tourism entrepreneurs.