Checking email has gotten a lot more exciting for Wendy Johnson lately.

As the organizer for the 28th Annual Maggie Valley Moonlight Race this year, Johnson sees a message show up in her in-box every time a runner registers on-line. It’s averaging about 15 a day, and Johnson revels in opening each one to see where the runners are coming from.

As the new owners of Ghost Town in the Sky pondered whether the dated mountaintop amusement park was a good business venture, one of their first questions was how many visitors they could feasibly expect to attract.

Hundreds of people ascended to Ghost Town, a beloved mountaintop amusement park in Maggie Valley, for an open house Monday celebrating news that the park will reopen next year.

The controversy over a proposed Super Wal-Mart complex in Waynesville took a turn at a town planning board meeting this week when developers presented a design for the store’s façade that by all accounts was the nicest looking Super Wal-Mart anyone had ever seen.

When Aaron Patterson graduated from Tuscola High this year, little did he know a big chunk of his summer break would be spent, clipboard in hand, sprawled out in the dirt on a 5,000-foot mountain top, sharing long intimate moments with the leaves of a wild coneflower plant.

Haywood County schools must pay back more than $300,000 in state flood repair grants after double-billing both the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the same work.

Ted Norman, former maintenance director of Haywood County Schools, claims he was the target of whistle-blower retaliation by the school system after repeatedly raising ethical concerns over the school’s handling of state and federal flood repair money.

In the old days, the months leading up to the Tsali Challenge triathlon meant a great scramble was on among racers to find a boat that could help them win the paddling leg of the race across Fontana Lake.

Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton could get $12 million in state assistance to offset the cost of converting from coal to natural gas, if a proposal pending in the General Assembly goes through.

Randy Best was a rare bird in the development heyday of the 2000s. Where others just saw dollar signs, Best actually saw land.

“I would spend a month walking a piece of property after we bought it. I walked every inch and when I was done, I knew where every house site was going to be, where every septic was going to be, how the roads would lay,” said Best, a Haywood County native.

An ongoing tug-of-war for control of the Haywood County Republican Party reached a finale last week.

A faction of conservative activists failed in their bid to wrest the chairman’s seat away from Pat Carr, who represents the mainstream party establishment. Carr now hopes the party can overcome the internal division that has plagued it for more than a year.

Waynesville leaders will face a tough choice in coming weeks: either raise the property tax rate by 3 cents or cut town services and amenities.

That’s the message Town Manager Marcy Onieal shared with Waynesville aldermen at a budget workshop last week.

Residents along Allens Creek in Waynesville are cheering a long-sought ban on the use of “jake” brakes by gravel trucks on their way to and from a rock quarry located in their otherwise residential community.

“It is like living in a different world out here,” Charles Miller, a resident of Allens Creek, said of the ban. “It’s definitely quieter up Allens Creek.”

Controversy over the handling of flood repairs by Haywood County Schools two years ago have been the subject of media attention over the past two weeks. This week, school board members were asked to weigh in and share their thoughts on how the flood repair were handled.

When word of a shooting in Whittier roused Swain County Sheriff Bob Ogle from his house last Thursday night, he arrived at a complex crime scene.

A task force charged with inspecting the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority is attempting to reshape the county’s approach to tourism promotion.

A rash of medical complications hit inmates in the Haywood County jail over the past year, socking the county with a $100,000 cost overrun.

Blame lies in part with a handful of big ticket procedures — a major stroke, heart bypass surgery, a heart catheterization following a heart attack for another. But there was also a run on more minor hospitalizations.

Critics of tourism-related economic development in Haywood County have joined forces with a conservative think tank from Raleigh to question the underlying premise of county travel and tourism agencies — namely, should they exist?

“Is that legitimate? Is that a core function of government?” posed Becki Gray, an analyst with the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Raleigh.

Haywood County Schools may have a tough choice to make in coming weeks: add additional teachers or give existing teachers a half-percent raise?

The Haywood School Board hoped to do both in the coming year, but likely won’t have enough money to make both a reality.

Haywood County Schools will see a slight budget increase from county commissioners next year, although it will fall far short of what school officials asked for.

The school system will get an extra $280,000 from the county — about a quarter of the $1.1 million increase the school system would have liked. But school officials were quick to give county commissioners an ‘A’ for effort. 

The Smoky Mountain News recently got a sneak peek of the new Swain County Heritage Museum and Visitor’s Center. Leading the tour was David Monteith, who’s been a driving force and visionary behind the museum since its inception.

The new Swain County Heritage Museum slated to open in downtown Bryson City this weekend not only honors Swain County’s history, but the sizeable visitor center housed inside also pays homage to Swain’s future.

Hospitals in North Carolina face a catch-22 of the worst kind: the $600 million kind, the kind they have no control over, the kind that involves politics.

Hospitals in North Carolina are seeing a financial hit they can ill-afford after state lawmakers in the General Assembly turned down the federal government’s offer to expand Medicaid last year. It would have added 500,000 uninsured poor to Medicaid rolls.

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are standing by their controversial decision last year to deny Medicaid expansion to 500,000 low-income people who otherwise lacked health coverage.

Some Democrats in the General Assembly are pushing to revisit Medicaid expansion, however. The legislative season had barely gotten underway last week when a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill that would reverse course on Medicaid expansion.

Lake Junaluska residents spearheading the annexation effort realized they needed more and better ammunition to prove their case and sway holdouts in the General Assembly to let the community merge with next-door Waynesville.

The large majority of Lake Junaluska property owners and registered voters want to join the town of Waynesville, according to a volunteer petition drive carried out over the last six months.

A $4 million payment to Swain County for the so-called Road to Nowhere cash settlement may soon be freed of the bureaucratic purgatory where it’s been parked for more than two years.

A telecommunications outage hit the Waynesville area last Thursday evening, knocking out cell phones, TV, Internet and even landlines for thousands of residents.

“One by one, across the county people are realizing on their own that they have no cellular services or voice or data communication tool,” said Greg Shuping, the Haywood County Emergency Services Director.

A man shot up the outside of a Verizon Wireless store in Waynesville last week following a town wide outage of both Verizon service and Charter Cable.

The dual outages cut off communication with the outside world for thousands of residents when their cell phones, TV and internet service went down for a few hours last Thursday evening.

Jane Hipps was quickly anointed front-runner status in the Democratic primary for N.C. Senate — from the day she entered the race, in fact — but the victory she pulled out was the epitome of a clean sweep.

Public outcry over a proposal to weaken steep slope rules in Jackson County has led to the creation of an online planning portal so the public can follow along, virtually, with what the planning board is up to.

The groundswell of opposition to steep slope changes this year revealed that the average Joe in Jackson County has a bigger appetite than most for the sausage-making of planning policies.

Cashiers area property owners have long complained that they pay more than their fair share when it comes to property taxes — ponying up 60 percent of the county’s total property taxes.

Justin Phillips narrowly avoided a stand-off with Maggie Valley town hall last week, but rest assured, he was ready to go the distance if need be.

Phillips launched a new farmers market last week in a large grassy field beside his coffee shop, Organic Beans Coffee Co., along the main commercial drag of Maggie Valley.

If there’s a word that precedes Ira Dove, it’s smart — really smart, very smart, even super smart.

“He’s always the smartest person in the room,” said Haywood County Commissioner Mark Swanger. “He is intelligent, he is very organized, he is an excellent communicator, he is a good listener, he is a good leader and has good common sense.”

Haywood County commissioners decided this week to install an irrigation system for the lawn of the historic courthouse to ensure the downtown Waynesville icon lives up to its landmark status.

A controversial proposal to roll back Jackson County’s steep slope rules has become politically charged in the countdown to county commissioner elections this fall — prompting the sitting commissioners to delay their discussion of it until after November.

Folkmoot USA International Dance Festival once again saw its grant funding cut by the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority.

The  event that brings in international folk dance and music troupes from eight to 10 countries for a 10-day extravaganza has been a signature festival in Haywood County for 30 years. But some on the county tourism authority have grown weary of continued financial support for Folkmoot year after year.

It’s an unenviable task, but one Haywood County tourism leaders face every year: weighing dozens of festivals and niche marketing campaigns vying for a share of tourism promotion dollars.

Deciding which festivals hold the most promise for luring coveted tourists is a balancing act, and one that’s sure to produce its share of winners and losers.

Next week is decision time for voters who disagree with the new conservative tack of North Carolina’s policy makers and want to reverse the emergent Republican majority now at the state’s helm.

A life-sized bronze sculpture of three children catching tadpoles will soon have a new pad in the Frog Level district of downtown Waynesville.

A leadership upheaval within the Haywood County GOP is far from settled, but some members are calling for a reconciliation of opposing camps within the party.

The internal power struggle in the local party should take a backseat to the more important task at hand: campaigning for Republican candidates who will be on the ballot this fall. At least that’s the appeal that Lisa Womack made to members of the executive committee at a party meeting earlier this month in Waynesville.

The legal community in the seven western counties has thrown its support behind Attorney Tessa Sellers, from Murphy, to fill a district court judge vacancy.

Three Haywood County commissioners running for re-election this year are standing on their track record of balanced leadership from the center of the political spectrum.

The three sitting commissioners on the ballot are Democrats, but they describe themselves as moderate.

Property taxes have emerged as a top issue in the Democratic primary for Haywood County commissioner candidates.

The three sitting commissioners running for re-election say the property tax platform of their challengers is a predictable one. Pledging to lower taxes is a tried-and-true campaign formula and borrows familiar lines from the national rhetoric. But the shoe doesn’t fit, sitting commissioners say.

Six attorneys vying for a vacant district court judge seat in the region will try to win the endorsement of the legal community this week, which could help their chances of landing the coveted spot on the bench.

A coup within the Haywood County Republican Party was set in motion this week by a group of precinct chairs who called for the ousting of the party’s chairwoman.

A takeover of the local party by a faction of conservative ideologues has been brewing for more than a year. The faction has increased its toehold in the party, eventually amassing enough seats on the executive committee to make an end-run for the chair’s seat.

The Waynesville skate park became an instant rock star after its debut last fall, gaining repute as a wildly popular concrete playground for all things on wheels gliding, sliding and flying over the ramps and rails all hours of the day.

For decades, mountain tourism strategists have concocted catchy ways to state the obvious: come visit us because we are in the mountains.

It was so predictable. And there were only so many ways you could say it.