Holly Kays
When 2024 dawned in Chattanooga, Tennessee, job hunting was the furthest thing from Jacqueline “Jacki” Harp’s mind. As regional director of REI’s southeastern United States operations, Harp loved her job and the feeling of home that came with nearly 18 years of professional history at the company. But then Smokies Life CEO Laurel Rematore announced her intent to retire, and the equation changed.
When Laurel Rematore announced she was moving to the Great Smoky Mountains, Denise Matsuoka was shocked. Matsuoka, Rematore’s close friend since high school, remembered how Rematore had described the Smokies when she’d visited a couple of years earlier.
When the Safe Passage coalition started working in 2017 to make Interstate 40 a safer place for people and wildlife through the Pigeon River Gorge, nobody knew that, in a few short years, entire sections of the critical roadway would vanish in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
As Hurricane Helene fomented in the Caribbean, it seemed likely that Great Smoky Mountains National Park would take a direct hit. The storm reached Category 4 before slamming Florida’s Gulf Coast, then headed north toward the Smokies.
Shadows and seasons are the main markers of time in Cataloochee Valley, a remote corner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park located more than 20 miles from the closest town and reachable only by a windy, narrow gravel road.
Growing up, Blount County native Carly Pearson considered time outdoors a way of life. When she wasn’t exploring the stunningly diverse landscape of nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park, she was giving it her all on the soccer field.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to an estimated 1,900 black bears — about two per square mile — with more than 14,500 of these iconic mammals roaming the four-state mountain region.
“There’s some legends and stories about this particular area, this place we’re at right now,” said Tommy Cabe, who is the forest resource specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and a member of the Tribe, looking out over the vibrantly green forest floor surrounding a tiny stream that flows across Chimney Tops Trail.
The air buzzed with excitement as the crowd gathered in downtown Waynesville, North Carolina, on Saturday, June 1. A standing-room-only assembly packed the street and sidewalk for a solid block between First Baptist Church and town hall, necks turned upward toward the new steel arch—still shrouded in black cloth—spanning Main Street.
For many people who grew up in the eastern United States, the soft yellow blink of fireflies drifting over dusky fields and lawns is synonymous with summer, a nostalgic symbol of warmth and childhood. But few would guess that the common eastern firefly (Photinus pyralis) is one of more than two thousand firefly species worldwide.
During the summer of 2011, billions of cicada eggs hatched inside tree twigs across the Southeast. The hatchlings, called nymphs, dropped down and burrowed into the ground, where they’ve been sucking on tree roots ever since.
They can eat just about anything and multiply like crazy. They live all over the world, in a variety of environments — wherever you go, they’re likely nearby.
When I first arrived in Western North Carolina just after New Year’s Day, 2014, I wasn’t planning to stay.
The tangle of trees and vines beyond the playground fence at North Canton Elementary School used to be a no-go zone for students, years of accumulated balls a testament to a long-time school rule against jumping the fence.
During its Feb. 22 meeting, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission voted to adopt a slate of proposed rule changes for the coming year, including a pair of controversial measures that will shift the season dates for white-tailed deer and significantly expand the season length for black bear in the mountain region.
A special prosecutor tasked with examining the investigation into a 2022 police shooting that severely injured Jason Harley Kloepfer at his home in Cherokee County has concluded that no criminal charges are warranted against any of the officers involved.
A decades-long debate over paddling rules on the Upper Chattooga River has come to a close after the appearance of a final ruling in November 2023 took some stakeholders by surprise.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony held Friday, Feb. 16, for a building dedicated to preserving the Cherokee language was a celebration of the culture and language that has formed the Cherokee people for countless generations.
George Mitchell Littlejohn, a commissioner on the Tribal Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, is facing 11 charges in tribal court following a Feb. 16 arrest for allegedly charging more than $1,800 to a TABCC credit card for a variety of unauthorized purchases.
With my eyes closed, I can’t see the patchwork of brown leaves and fallen twigs covering the forest floor before me, the pale green lattice of lichen peppering the trunks of upward-reaching trees, or the waters of Fisher Creek rushing over a bed of weathered rocks.
A man who was severely injured in a 2022 police shooting at his home in Cherokee County won’t see a resolution to his civil suit until August 2025 at the earliest, according to a recent filing in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
A pair of new environmental violations issued this month brings the total for Canton’s shuttered paper mill up to seven since it closed last June and 22 since May 2021 — an average of 1.3 violations every two months.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will ask the federal government to take 38.2 acres in Graham and Swain counties into federal trust following unanimous votes from Tribal Council Thursday, Feb. 1.
Despite being closed for months, the Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton continues to rack up environmental violations, with two recently issued violations for exceeding fecal coliform limits bringing its total number of violation notices since May 2021 up to 22.
Starting in the fall, North Carolina students whose families make less than $80,000 a year will receive a guaranteed scholarship toward attending any of the state’s public colleges and universities.
The Cherokee Indian Police Department has determined the identity of the person whose remains were found in an open field Tuesday, Jan. 2, but it’s not disclosing any information about the individual beyond that the person was male.
Severe drought is gone from North Carolina and moderate drought barely holding on after an extraordinarily rainy first half of January.
Diversity within the Western Carolina University workforce has been inching up, with the latest report showing that the last year’s worth of staffing changes held steady the proportion of racial and ethnic minorities on the university’s payroll while strengthening the existing majority of female WCU employees and resulting in a sharp increase in the percentage of employees with a disability.
In a unanimous vote, the Cherokee Tribal Council has approved an ordinance change aimed at protecting victims of elder abuse while their alleged abuser’s legal process plays out.
More than 100 people came to a public hearing Thursday, Jan. 11, at Haywood Community College in Clyde, that took input on what would be the first changes to black bear hunting season dates since the 1970s — and opinions were mixed.
In 2023, visitation to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park grew 2.2% to reach its second-highest number ever — but the number of visits starting in the North Carolina side of the park fell 5.1% compared to 2022.
Heavy rains last week banished all but a spot of severe drought from the mountain region, with more relief likely to be reflected in next week’s drought map from the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council.
After months of stalemate, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians appears ready to advance its cannabis enterprise.
As 23-year-old David Crockett opened his eyes to day two of sub-freezing temperatures in the snow-covered Shining Rock Wilderness, he had no idea that, seven years later, he’d be telling his story on film.
While mountain residents were busy preparing for Christmas, the Pactiv Evergreen paper mill in Canton that until May 2023 employed more than 1,000 of them was racking up a pair of new environmental violations.
Tribal Council members stood to show their unanimous support Thursday, Jan. 4, for a resolution they hope will result in a name change for Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
A former Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians official and cannabis board member accused of soliciting favors from a contractor that was negotiating a contract with the tribe’s cannabis enterprise will pay a fine and face a ban on future appointments to tribal positions, Tribal Council decided in a vote Thursday, Jan. 4.
The Cherokee Supreme Court has vacated the conviction of a man who was prosecuted for his alleged role in a cyberattack that crippled the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ computer network in December 2019.
Western Carolina University is gearing up to take its first bite out of an estimated $130 million in needed upgrades to its athletic facilities, with the Board of Trustees recently hiring a construction manager to oversee the first chunk of projects, worth at least $30 million.
Boyce Deitz’s influence on Swain County athletics was rich and storied, but the program to which he dedicated two decades of his life summarized the news of his passing in just four words.
Declared to be the Year of the Trail more than a year before it even began, 2023 had a lot to live up to.
At least one Cherokee teenager is believed to have died as the result of a local teen suicide pact under investigation by the Cherokee Indian Police Department. Investigators believe one attempted suicide was also a result of the pact.
In a 65-page answer to an extensive lawsuit filed in response to the December 2022 police shooting of Jason Harley Kloepfer in Cherokee County, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office emphasized that it was officers with the Cherokee Indian Police Department, not CCSO deputies, who fired the shots, and denied allegations that its deputies and supervisors mishandled the case from the beginning.
After more than two months of operating under a continuing resolution, Tribal Council has approved a new budget for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
The Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino and Hotel in Murphy is abuzz these days as 200 on-site construction workers hustle to finish a $275 million expansion project expected to open in 2024.
The court has made its decision in the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office’s request to dismiss many of the complaints in a lawsuit stemming from the 2022 shooting of Jason Harley Kloepfer at his home near Murphy.
