The Pisgah Inn's act of defiance delighted the Tea Party, who wield huge influence in this rural Appalachian district. But other constituents are paying a high price for Republican intransigence

It took more than three days and 13 hours for the US government shutdown, concocted in Washington, to reach the doors of the Pisgah Inn.

A lodge perched on top of a mountain range in North Carolina, it was one of thousands of private businesses across America ordered to close because they were, in some way, beholden to the federal government.

Furious that the company should be forced to cease business just because it is a leased building on federal land, the inn's owner decided to defy the official order from the park service, and opened its gates to passing tourists. The result was an unlikely drama that unfolded on the hotel grounds, beside Blue Ridge Parkway, at 1pm last Friday.

Suddenly, armed park rangers were on site, ordering customers to leave and blocking the three entrances to the inn with their cars. "They stayed there through the night, non-stop, barricading the people out," said Bruce O'Connell, 59, the owner and managing director of the Pisgah Inn. "Customers were fuming. My employees were in tears."

The standoff in the Appalachians lasted only two hours, but O’Connell’s showdown with federal park officials transformed him into a hero for anti-government conservatives. He was flown to Dallas to appear on Fox News. Dozens of Tea Party supporters appeared outside the inn, anointing this rural spot, 20 miles from the nearest town, Asheville, as a symbolic battleground.

But there is an irony to this story that has so far gone unnoticed. If there is one place outside Washington that can claim responsibility for the government shutdown, it is here: the 11th congressional district of North Carolina.

Last year, voters elected Mark Meadows, a Tea Party-backed Republican who typifies the kind of rightwinger calling the shots in the House of Representatives. He caused a minor controversy during his 2012 election campaign when, standing in front of a Tea Party Express bus, he declared his intention "to send Mr Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is".

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Congressman Meadows at a Tea Party rally

But he won by a large majority, benefiting from a redistricting of the electoral boundaries that transformed the district, formerly Democratic, into a Republican stronghold.

Over the summer, Meadows quietly spearheaded an early attempt by House Republicans to use their leverage over the federal budget to defund Barack Obama's flagship healthcare reform, authoring a letter signed by 79 hardliners and submitted to the Republican leadership in August. Quoting James Madison, Meadows said the budget was "the most complete and effectual weapon" they had against the healthcare law.

Weeks later, the Republican leadership refused to pass a budget unless Obama's Affordable Care Act was defunded, effectively paralysing large parts of government. The move earned Meadows, a freshman who had only been in Washington 10 months, the title of "architect" and "mastermind" of the first federal shutdown in almost two decades, which locked out 800,000 workers.

Boxed in

The House Republican leader, John Boehner, has found himself boxed in by a core of several dozen congressmen like Meadows, all of whom answer to a conservative wing of the GOP that will apparently stop at nothing in its effort to undermine Obama's healthcare reforms. Even if that means shutting down the government.

"For me, it is about representing the 749,000 people I was elected to represent," Meadows told CNN on 1 October, the first day of the shutdown. He insisted the people of the 11th district of North Carolina wanted him to fight Obamacare "regardless of consequences".

Those consequences are rippling across America. Alaskan fishermen are unable to work because they cannot obtain permits. Efforts to clean the Missouri river in Nebraska have been halted because there are no federal boats. Farmers in Kansas and Ohio are up in arms because the agency that sets commodity prices has stopped working.

Then there are the country's 59 protected national parks, monuments and other public lands, all of which have been closed. Many of the closures have occurred in rural Republican districts, and are affecting small businesses, such as the Pisgah Inn, which are reliant upon tourism. Republicans are trying desperately to stifle a growing sense that they are hurting people they wanted to help.

National park officials on the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. Photograph: Jon Ostendorff/Asheville Citizen/Reuters

Voters who elected Meadows are paying a particularly high price. The nearby Great Smoky Mountains national park is closed. And although the Blue Ridge Parkway, a 469-mile stretch of road that slices through Meadows' constituency, remains open, more than 80% of park service staff have been furloughed.

So-called "concession businesses" – campgrounds, country stores and hotels that trade by the side of the road – have all been ordered to close. While the standoff with park rangers lasted only a couple of hours, the Pisgah Inn was closed for six days. The park service only backed down after O’Connell hired lawyers to mount a challenge in a federal court.

By Thursday, the Pisgah Inn was once again filled with staff, nearly all of whom had nothing but contempt for those politicians 500 miles away in Washington. Annie Wheliss, 28, who runs the gift store, described hardline Republicans using the shutdown to deny her access to healthcare – a gesture that temporarily cost her a job – as "personally offensive".

Nor was Wheliss pleased that her place of work had become a rallying point for Tea Party protesters. "There were people coming up saying Obama should be assassinated," she said. "I mean, really extreme views."

'I'd love to have healthcare'

There were mixed views about the cause of the dispute: the Affordable Care Act. O'Connell does not currently offer insurance to his staff, and said the new penalties under the law against employers who do not provide insurance will "cripple" his business. "You might say, 'Bruce, why don't you just get insurance for your employees?'" he said. "Well, because that will cost even more than the penalty.”

A handful of staff had tried to sign up to the government’s glitch-prone health insurance website, but found it too complicated. "I'd love to have healthcare," said Wheliss. “It would help an enormous amount.”

Jane Bilello, the chair of the Asheville Tea Party, who helped get its hardline congressman elected, was at the Pisgah Inn on Thursday night at an impromptu celebration of the hotel's reopening. The whole country is gathering behind you," she told O'Connell, the owner. "You're a hero."

O'Connell's elderly mother, Phyllis Prevost, was not so sure:

They're playing their game in Washington, and it has been costing me money I personally think it was silly for the Republicans to use the shutdown as a wedge. I don't think it was good, politically, for the Republican party.

There are signs that the GOP could be punished: NBC News and the Wall Street Journal released one of their regular polls Thursday evening that showed voters blamed Republicans more than the president for the shutdown by a margin of 53-31.

But the Tea Party shows no signs of relenting, and here in North Carolina’s 11th district, Bilello is unapologetic about the influence she wields over her congressman. "Just before I came here, my phone was ringing , and it was Mark," she said. "He said, Jane, I gotta talk to you about what is going on with the debt ceiling."

Congressman Mark Meadows speaks at the "xempt America from Obamacare rally, on Capitol Hill, 10 September 2013. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

She insisted Meadows would hold firm, describing him as "a poster boy" for the Tea Party. Earlier in the week, she and 20 other activists held a rally near the Henderson county courthouse to express their support for Meadows. Asked what she would do if Meadows unexpectedly softened his policies, Bilello replied: "I would have to get everybody together and say: 'Look, Mark has gone off the rails. What are we gonna do? We want to pull our endorsement.'"

For his part, Meadows appears to have fallen conspicuously silent since the shutdown started to bite. His most recent public comments were made eight days ago, just as the Pisgah Inn and other local businesses reliant on the Blue Ridge Parkway were starting to close. Meadows insisted his influence on Capitol Hill had been "greatly overstated". He told a journalist on the local Asheville Citizen Times: