Landslide repairs to U.S. 441 through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were completed early this week — reopening the primary tourist corridor through the park nearly a month ahead of schedule.

All bets are on in Cherokee.

The first major poker tournament held at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Resort has lured crowds of card sharks from the southeast and beyond, surpassing attendance expectations, and even breaking records.

The 12-day event, organized by the World Series of Poker, drew hundreds of participants from big poker names to hometown mavericks. The series is a professional poker circuit that hosts tournaments around the country in top gambling spots like Atlantic City, Chicago and Las Vegas. Now, you can add Cherokee to that list.

Judaculla Rock, a prehistoric gem of the Cherokee and the most heavily inscribed petroglyph in the East, is putting Jackson County on the map.

Repairs to U.S. 441 are nearing completion.

A football-field-sized portion of U.S. 441, which runs through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was completely washed away in January after days of heavy rain resulted in a landslide.

I’m sometimes asked if the prehistoric Cherokees used any sort of poisons on their blowgun darts. These darts (slivers of black locust, hickory, or white oak) were from 10 to 20 inches long with thistledown tied at one end to form an air seal in the blowgun (a hollowed piece of cane cut to a length of seven to nine feet). The Cherokees were accurate with these weapons up to 60 feet, especially when shooting birds, but there is no evidence they used poisons of any sort on their darts. 

All 12 seats on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Tribal Council are up for grabs this year.

As the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ leaders mull the fate of bear zoos on the reservation, representatives from two of Cherokee’s three bear zoos have said they are being unfairly harried because of one bad egg.

Cherokee Tribal Council was asked to green light the construction of a second $110 million casino and hotel near Murphy last week but instead voted to table the issue for further study.

The new casino could add about 800 jobs to the area and expand Cherokee’s market reach, according to projections by the Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise, which is advocating for the project.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians could decide soon whether to move forward with a second casino near Murphy, but some tribal members are raising concerns.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians could see an estimated $2.2 million evaporate from its budget in March if Congress does not reach an agreement on the federal budget and mandatory, across-the-board cuts of 5.1 percent known as sequestration kick in.

The threat of sequestration was supposed to be an incentive for divisive lawmakers to come to an agreement on where to rein in spending and where to raise additional revenue.