A man threatened to tase a young Cherokee girl at a football game last month, but it is unclear just who he was.

One thing is sure however, it wasn’t a Swain County Sheriff’s deputy.

For years Bryson City has battled gaudy signs, decrepit signs and too many signs, particularly along U.S. 19 coming into town. Until now, it’s never had a legal foot to stand on.

Candidates have lined up to run for the town board in Bryson City this November after two current aldermen have bowed out of public office, leaving two empty seats up for grabs in a wide-open race.

What looked like a risk to some was a dream for Diane Cutler and Andy Zivinsky.

A cacophony of voices and cheers echoed across Bryson City as a sea of humanity overtook the small town, a wall-to-wall crowd churning and pressing their way through downtown with excitement radiating from each face.

Batten down the hatches, the 2013 ICF Canoe Freestyle World Championships are coming.

“This event shows how this tiny town can come together and work together,” said Joe Rowland. “Everybody involved has invested a lot of time and energy into making a natural connection between Bryson City and the Nantahala Gorge.”

The whistle of the excursion train on the far side of the river shrieked three times. From where I sat in the graveyard on the knoll overlooking Bryson City, I could see tourists waving from their windows the way travelers never do when departing on a trip that’s really going somewhere. 

It was a rather strange place to have a life-changing epiphany, but there he was, on the set of a British reality TV show in 2007, deep in the bowels of the Borneo jungles, when Jonathon Bryant found a purpose in life. 

Set in some of the most remote jungles on the planet, “Adrenaline Junkie” was shooting its third series. Starring Jack Osbourne, son of the famous rocker Ozzy, and five tag-alongs, the show took viewers through the primitive Pacific island, encountering wild boar, bloodsucking leeches and the secluded people of the Penan, exotically adorned with drooping ear lobes, weighted earrings and body tattoos.

Standing in an empty field, Martin Cook has a vision. 

Founder of the renowned Western North Carolina gospel group The Inspirations, Cook looks around the band’s 29-acre property (dubbed “Inspiration Park”) just east of Bryson City. The beauty and grandeur spills far and wide, and that’s just the backdrop he enjoys sharing each year during their “Singing In The Smokies” festival, which runs July 4-6.

Despite cutting more than $50,000 from the town’s budget, Bryson City’s leaders plan to raise property taxes and town fees in the coming fiscal year.