Finally face to face amid a simmering standoff over library governance and subjectively inappropriate material in a regional library system that’s served locals for more than 80 years, Jackson County commissioners spent nearly three hours in a joint meeting with the Fontana Regional Library Board of Trustees on June 19 learning just how much they don’t know about running a library.

With the help and cooperation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the North Shore Cemetery Association will be hosting decorations at Bone Valley and Hall cemeteries on Sunday, June 22 with the first boat shuttle leaving at 8:30 a.m. and the last boat leaving at 10 a.m. from the Cable Cove Boating Access Area near Fontana Village. 

My office is cool and our building on Montgomery Street in Waynesville is quiet. Almost everyone who works at The Smoky Mountain News has gone home for a few minutes to tend to kids, dogs, wives and husbands as it’s one hour before the annual first Friday in June birthday bash celebrating another year of putting out this weekly print newspaper (and now a seven-day-per-week news website).  

When Hurricane Helene slammed into Western North Carolina in late 2024, public attention focused on damaged homes, washed-out roads and the rigid bureaucracy meant to help with recovery, but the widespread physical damage was closely followed by a slow-moving economic catastrophe unfolding among the region’s small businesses, farmers and local governments. Now, eight months later, help may finally be on the way. 

Republican Mike Clampitt, currently serving his fourth term as District 119 House Rep., tells The Smoky Mountain News he plans to run for reelection in 2026 despite recent health concerns. In April, Clampitt announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare, serious form of blood and bone marrow cancer known as Myelodysplastic syndrome. 

Prior to its appropriation by communist regimes, International Workers Day — May Day — was first commemorated in honor of Chicago workers killed while striking for an eight-hour workday.

Shortly after a wildfire broke out in the Lower Alarka region of Swain County, Southwestern Community College’s Megan Nicholson made arrangements to help firefighters and emergency management teams set up their temporary command center at SCC’s Swain Center. 

On Sunday, May 4 with the cooperation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the North Shore Cemetery Association will host decorations at Woody and Hoyle Cemeteries. 

Contract crews for the N.C. Department of Transportation will be replacing guardrail along a stretch of N.C. 28 for the next several months. 

Every year, millions of people visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park to experience its clear mountain streams, verdant views, and diverse forms of natural beauty. The mountains exert a powerful spell — but too often, that spell is broken by the sight of plastic bottles and candy wrappers scattered beside trailheads and overlooks, fast food bags and old tires flung along roadsides and plastic bags or balloons hung in treetops.