Holly Kays
Cherokee has lost its second honored member in the space of a month with the Nov. 24 death of Amanda Swimmer, 97.
By late November, the trees at 5,000 feet are mostly bare, once-green leaves covering the forest floor like a brown blanket, obscuring the ground that had hosted all manner of wildflowers and shrubs and berries during the warmer months.
Some people might describe the forest as dead or lifeless, but not those who know where to look. Paul Super, science coordinator for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is one of those people. Stationed up at the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center at Purchase Knob, Super’s office is just a stone’s throw away from the Cataloochee Divide Trail and the upland forest surrounding it.
A plan to conserve more than 900 acres of high-elevation terrain in Jackson County will move forward after the Clean Water Management Trust Fund Board voted last week to award $1.5 million toward its protection.
A man claiming the courts misled him when accepting his guilty plea. A woman with a disability contending termination from her job amounted to unlawful discrimination. A man convicted of murder in 1976 arguing that new facts show that he is innocent.
When Rob Gasbarro and Cory McCall met in 2008, their friendship formed around hiking and biking the mountains surrounding Franklin, their weekdays filled by burgeoning careers in civil structural engineering and real estate, respectively.
Then came the recession. Things got bad and then worse. By 2010, the careers that they’d planned to retire in, provide for families with, seemed headed for an early end.
For the second time in less than a month, an ordinance that would abolish the Qualla Housing Authority and place all Cherokee’s housing services under the Department of Housing and Community Development has been tabled.
Robust voter turnout and early voting enthusiasm made the difference in three Jackson County Board of Commissioners races, causing the board to flip from a Republican to a Democratic majority.
If all goes as planned, Jackson County will spend $550,000 to buy the old Pepsi-Cola plant in Whittier, following a party-line vote Friday, Nov. 9.
The Sylva Town Board is considering who it should choose to replace Commissioner Harold Hensley on the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority Board when the calendar turns to 2019.
In 2008, the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation launched a new program aiming to get kids and families out exploring the high-elevation corridor. Ever since, the Kids in Parks program has mushroomed into a national endeavor with designated trails from San Diego, California, to Nags Head, North Carolina.
Kids in Parks was recognized for its decade of accomplishments when it won the Youth Engagement Award at the SHIFT Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The annual SHIFT Awards recognize individuals, initiatives and organizations that contribute to conservation through human-powered outdoor recreation.
The University of North Carolina Board of Governors has selected the man who could well be charged with nominating the next chancellor of Western Carolina University.
A recent court ruling in Texas has Native American tribes across the country — including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians — concerned about threats to their status as sovereign nations.
The Jackson County Board of Commissioners will flip to a Democratic majority following a hotly contested election in which three of the five seats appeared on the ballot.
Jackson County Sheriff Chip Hall will keep his job for another four years following a decisive victory on Election Day.
If a partnership between Jackson County and the Nantahala Area Southern Off Road Bicycle Association comes to fruition, kids in Cullowhee could soon have access to a new mountain biking track made specifically for them.
“The county reached out to us saying that they had been hoping to build a bike park on that area in the greenway,” said J.P. Gannon, president of Nantahala SORBA and assistant professor of geology at Western Carolina University. “When we heard that we jumped on it and said, ‘We can make that happen if they want to have it happen.’”
The Cherokee Tribal Council is considering disbanding the Qualla Housing Authority, an organization that was formed in 1993 to create and maintain housing for low-income tribal members.
When retired teacher Villa Brewer went to get her mail Oct. 23, she returned with two interesting letters. One was from the N.C. State Health Plan, reminding her that Oct. 31 is the deadline to change her health insurance plan during open enrollment. The second was from Harris Regional Hospital, stating that the hospital’s current contract with UnitedHealthCare — of which Brewer is a member — will end Jan. 1 unless Harris can negotiate better reimbursement rates from the insurer.
Western Carolina University students whose lives have been changed by the tuition reduction program N.C. Promise got to tell their stories to UNC System President Margaret Spellings during her visit to campus Wednesday, Oct. 24.
When UNC System President Margaret Spellings visited Cullowhee Wednesday, Oct. 24, the prevailing mood was celebratory and lighthearted as she lauded the success of the new tuition reduction program at Western Carolina University and congratulated student speakers on their accomplishments. But, within 48 hours of her return to Raleigh, Spellings would announce her resignation from the position she’d held for less than three years.
An effort is underway to make North Carolina’s 24 western counties into the next outdoor gear industry hub, and the far western region is poised to find itself at the epicenter of that wave.
“We’ve already got tremendous momentum within the outdoor sector from the early work that’s been done to cultivate this sector,” said Matt Raker, director of community investments and impact for Asheville-based Mountain BizWorks. “A lot of that is rooted in our exceptional outdoor recreation assets we’ve got across the region, from Tsali to the new Fire Mountain Trails to the Tuckasegee and the Pigeon River Gorge, you name it — we could go on for a long time. That’s helped attract a lot of entrepreneurs and brands here, but they have some specific needs to be able to grow.”
City Lights Café is a fixture in Sylva, a frequent stopping place for downtown workers in search of a cup of coffee, students looking for a place to snack and study or tourists needing a quick and healthy bite before continuing their exploration of Jackson County.
Growing up in Germany as the daughter of a repair shop owner, Ute Grant knew three things about how her life should go: she never wanted to go to America, she never wanted to get married and she never wanted to be self-employed. But life has a way of showing up the firmest of convictions.
Sylva attorney Kim Carpenter’s legal career started after law school, but the year she spent beforehand working with the Swain County Department of Social Services planted the seeds.
There’s still more than a year to go before the N.C. Department of Transportation starts acquiring right-of-way for the N.C. 107 project in Sylva, but businesses are already making decisions about whether to leave town, and governmental entities are already having conversations about how to entice them to stay.
MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center will soon begin work toward an alternative vision of the N.C. 107 project in Sylva.
Brannen Basham spends more time puttering around the yard than the average homeowner, but the result is not what most people would picture when asked to envision a well-cared-for lawn.
The calendar had declared the start of fall two weeks prior, but that didn’t stop the sun from shining hot and high over Cullowhee Oct. 5, the last day of classes before fall break. For much of Western Carolina University’s student body, the heat probably didn’t matter — they’d already finished their last class and hit the road for a weeklong respite from academics.
When former Sheriff Jimmy Ashe decided not to run for re-election in 2014, a field of six Democrats and three Republicans signed up for the race to replace him, including Chip Hall and Doug Farmer.
From towering mountains to shimmering seas, North Carolina has a little bit of everything — and for the trail that ties it all together, a major milestone has just been marked.
On Wednesday, Oct. 3, trail volunteers, government officials and natural resources workers from across the state gathered at Oconaluftee Visitor Center in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee to celebrate completion of a 300-mile section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, starting at Clingmans Dome and ending at Stone Mountain State Park in Allegheny and Wilkes counties.
A week-long search for a missing woman in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park ended in tragedy Tuesday, Oct. 2, when search crews located the body of 53-year-old Ohio resident Mitzie Sue “Susan” Clements about 2 miles from the Clingmans Dome parking area.
As the 2019 fiscal year begins for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the tribe is operating under a recently passed budget that trims $40.4 million off the $604.7 million budget passed last year.
During an Aug. 6 public hearing on the future of N.C. 107 in Sylva, Kel-Save owner Robert Kelley was the first to speak, delivering an impassioned treatise on the need for a plan that would do more to protect Sylva’s small business community from annihilation as right-of-way is acquired.
Ron Mau is still in the midst of his first term on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, started in 2016, but this November he’s challenging incumbent Chairman Brian McMahan in McMahan’s bid for re-election.
A nighttime breath of fresh air turned traumatic for 75-year-old Swannanoa resident Toni Rhegness when she spotted three bear cubs while walking her dog on leash in her front yard Sept. 18.
While Rhegness followed important bear safety rules at her own home — not leaving trash outside and keeping her dog leashed, for starters — her neighbor had left garbage cans outside for pickup the next morning, and the cubs were scavenging them for a meal. Seeing the cubs, the dog barked. Rhegness shouted to scare the bears off and picked up her dog to go inside.
After more than two months in limbo, the search for Western Carolina University’s next leader has re-launched with the goal of naming a new chancellor by the end of the academic year.
There was no discussion as the Jackson County Commissioners voted 3-2 Oct. 1 to uphold a vote they took in August to abolish the Consolidated Human Services Board and put themselves in its place.
Jackson County Commissioner Boyce Deitz took office in 2014 after wresting the seat from incumbent Doug Cody, but this time around Cody is looking to reverse that result in a repeat face-off to represent District 2.
My bride and I celebrated our anniversary by ditching the kids and renting a cabin near Blue Ridge, Ga., for the weekend.
Andrew Shepherd has only been a runner for about two years. But when he took up the hobby, he was after more than a casual 5K.
An initial tally shows that 434 hikers cumulatively covered 2,756 miles of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail during its birthday weekend Sept. 7 to 9, an average of 6.4 miles per hiker.
Tribal Council extended its deadline to complete a slew of amendments to its election ordinance with a unanimous vote during its Sept. 6 meeting.
Jackson County Schools showed mostly level performance over last year with the release of statewide school performance data for 2017-18 this month.
Jackson County Commissioner Charles Elders is seeking a fourth term in office this campaign season, but challenger Gayle Woody is hoping election results will instead seat her for a first term.
Work will begin next year on a new apartment complex in Sylva aimed at providing housing rates affordable to working-class people.
Chimney Rock State Park is now reopen, complete with a working elevator, after a tough year that included extensive damage from Tropical Storm Alberto and a short closure due to Hurricane Florence.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park volunteers received regional recognition through the George and Helen Hartzog Awards Program for Outstanding Volunteers this summer.
Schools and other educational organizations in Western North Carolina have the opportunity to bring wildlife education programs to their home turf through the Mountain Wildlife Outreach program.
The Maggie Valley Lions Club raised more than $10,000 for local charities with its 10th annual Golf Tournament and Silent Auction held Thursday, Aug. 23.
A Swannanoa woman sustained serious, though non-life-threatening, injuries Tuesday, Sept. 18, after an encounter with a black bear.
To call the view stretching out below the 5,462-foot bald “spectacular,” “impressive” or even “jaw-dropping” would be an understatement.
It was as clear a day as had been spotted in the mountains this rainy year, skies blue and cloudless ahead of the slowly moving remains of Hurricane Florence. The sun shone on Cherokee to the west, Bryson City visible just a couple folds of land beyond it and the Nantahala Mountains rimming the horizon south and west of the small towns.
