Holly Kays
Like an old friend: Two decades of rock climbing getaways build friendship, identity for Sylva woman
Twenty years ago, Erin McManus and her friend Amy Miller were 22-year-olds fresh out of college, with no jobs, no boyfriends and a love of adventure. So, they did what many have dreamed of doing — they outfitted McManus’ little Mazda pickup truck with a loft bed and kitchen set-up, packed up their rock climbing gear and hit the road. For six whole months.
Autumnal vibrancy will depend on weather conditions over the next few weeks, according to Western Carolina University’s fall color soothsayer.
After nearly a year of public hearings, votes and contentious meetings, Jackson County’s health and social services departments are back where they started — sort of.
The Town of Sylva will take MountainTrue up on its offer to look for a better design for N.C. 107, with MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center currently working up a scope of work and timeline for the project.
Most people would not see a diagnosis of incurable cancer as an invitation to run 1,175 miles. But Kenny Capps is not most people.
“It’s a cancer that requires you to say on top of it,” he said. “Moving in whatever way you can, that’s invaluable to being able to live with it. Because you can live with it. I know it’s terminal, but so is life. They don’t have a cure for that either.”
After pleading guilty to involvement in a marriage fraud scheme, Ruth Marie Sequoyah McCoy, of Cherokee, was sentenced to two years of probation and a $2,000 fine in a hearing held Aug. 23 at the Western District of North Carolina U.S. District Court in Asheville.
History through story: Cherokee storyteller seeks to preserve historical memory with filming project
Kathi Littlejohn can get lost in stories. Especially Cherokee stories. Their origins are often moored in worlds long past, but these stories have a tendency to twist through the years to end up knocking on the door of modernity.
“One of my first jobs as a teenager was working at the Oconaluftee Indian Village, which I absolutely loved. I was a tour guide,” recalled Littlejohn, who is now 63. “And on bad weather days when it was real slow, it was so much fun for me to sit with the people that were doing the crafts or some of the older guides and listen to stories.”
Now well into its second year of operation, things are purring along at the American Museum of the House Cat in Sylva, so much so that director Harold Sims is hatching a plan to build a new, bigger home for the cat-honoring attraction.
Jackson County commissioners are back to square one after voting to abolish the newly consolidated human services agency and its newly seated board Monday night.
Eight months have passed since the Jackson County Commissioners voted to merge the county’s health and social services departments, but members of the Consolidated Human Services Board newly created to oversee the consolidated department are still holding out hope that the decision will be reversed. During its Aug. 14 meeting, the board voted to delay hiring a director for the merged department until after the November elections.
Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail surpassed its fundraising goal of $200,000 to bring in $274,838 through its 40th anniversary campaign.
Purchase to boost Bartram access: Mainspring conserves 71 acres of Little Tennessee River bottomland
A recent land purchase by Mainspring Conservation Trust could spell a new era for the Bartram Trail in Macon County.
The nonprofit purchased two tracts totaling 71 acres — sandwiched between the Needmore Game Lands and the Nantahala National Forest, and running along the Little Tennessee River — in July, with hopes of eventually conveying the property to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.
My car is usually something of a mess, a magnet for loose papers, empty food wrappers and an impressively random assortment of items packed for some excursion or another but never returned to their proper place. Such was the case the day of my first-ever outing as a big sister with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and so I judiciously set aside a few minutes before leaving to clear out the passenger seat — though mostly by tossing all the junk covering it into the back.
A public input session on the question of whether Jackson County should form a middle school drew split opinion during a public hearing Tuesday, Aug. 7.
Western Carolina University has reached an agreement with Morris Broadband to expand high-speed internet service to rural, underserved areas of the Cullowhee Valley area near campus through the use of existing power poles owned by the university’s electricity distribution service.
Pension plan double-dipping is prompting the Cherokee Tribal Council to consider tripling the number of years required to draw from the tribe’s retirement plan from five to 15.
Southwestern Community College is moving forward with plans for a $20 million health sciences building, having accepted applications from 11 contracting firms seeking to become prequalified to submit a bid for the project.
Barbed wire and hundreds of pounds of donuts are the key ingredients in a University of Tennessee Knoxville effort to complete the largest-scale black bear population study ever attempted.
The 16 million-acre study area covers portions of Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, but by far the biggest chunk — about 8 million acres — includes portions of 24 WNC counties. Researchers collected data from the other three states last year but are spending the second and last year of the study focused solely on counting bears in North Carolina.
A Cherokee woman who successfully fought off disorderly conduct charges earlier this year has filed suit against nine parties in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians government, claiming that she’d been subjected to years of hostile working conditions and sexual harassment leading up to the criminal charge, which she said was based on a fabricated version of events.
New parking is coming to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino following the Cherokee Tribal Council’s unanimous vote Aug. 2 to transfer a 4.7-acre tract to the Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise.
A brief conversation in Tribal Council Wednesday, Aug. 1, was the first public discussion on how the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians might eventually regulate the commercial use of culturally sensitive names since the issue was raised following the launch of 7 Clans Brewing.
Sylva Town Hall was filled beyond capacity as Mayor Lynda Sossamon called a public forum on the redevelopment of N.C. 107 into session Monday, Aug. 6.
When Sam Chandler heard that the summer camp he’d been attending for years planned to launch an adventure camp, he was sold. Chandler — who at 17 is a rising senior at Tuscola High School in Waynesville — was quick to sign up for the week of ziplining, hiking and whitewater rafting at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. He came back for a second year, and, when he’d maxed out the two-year cap on adventure camp attendance, returned this year as a counselor.
It would be a common story of summer camp memories and corresponding summer camp allegiance, but for one simple fact: Chandler, like the rest of the teens embarking on these outdoor excursions, is mostly blind.
Jackson County stands alone among the western counties for not having a separate middle school, but a group of parents is hoping to change that.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is in the midst of an effort to overhaul its elections laws, with a Sept. 30 deadline to take a final vote if the new rules are to apply for the September 2019 elections.
A new partnership between Southwestern Community College and Harris Regional Hospital aims to help aspiring nurses afford their education while bolstering Harris’ ability to maintain a quality staff.
Establishing a park in the Savannah community of Jackson County will be more expensive than originally anticipated, with commissioners voting unanimously July 16 to add $150,000 to the existing $250,000 project budget.
Grayson Wolfe is the kid with the huge smile on his face as he jumps between stepping stones on the obstacle course. He’s the kid biting his tongue in concentration as he prepares to descend the slide; the kid blowing air through a straw with all he’s got to power his paper boat through the water; the kid leaning over to hug one of the adults volunteering that day at Full Spectrum Farms.
“He’s really shining here,” said Grayson’s dad Ron Wolfe, watching his son play.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will seek $280 million in credit to fund a list of five priority projects following a 9-2 vote during Tribal Council’s July 10 Budget Council meeting.
Educational leaders from across the mountain region convened at Cherokee Central Schools this month for an afternoon of conversation and collaboration around one central question — what can North Carolina communities do to better prepare their children for success against the unknown challenges of the future?
Intermittent breeze ripples the water atop Lake Junaluska as the sky vacillates between sun and cloud, but the wind can’t quite carry away the excited shouts and chatter of the 60 kids and teens strung out along the dock, casting lines in the water or paddling its surface in red canoes.
“There goes Maggie!” somebody shouts, pointing to a little girl whose head just barely rises above the top of the canoe as she reclines between two teenage volunteers and another young girl, who supports Maggie carefully from behind.
Western Carolina University will have to wait a little longer to welcome a new chancellor to Cullowhee following a July 16 announcement from the University of North Carolina Board of Governors.
Long-debated plans to renovate the old Cherokee Indian Hospital building as a crisis stabilization unit will now move forward following a 9-2 vote from Tribal Council to appropriate $31 million in funding.
When the Jackson County Health and Human Services Board met for its inaugural meeting June 11, board members made it clear that they had some major questions about county commissioners’ decision to create the consolidated board. The two-hour meeting ended with an exclamation mark when Jerry DeWeese announced his resignation from the board, with the remaining board members taking a split vote in favor of asking commissioners to provide a letter of explanation for the consolidation.
A youthful lark ended in tragedy July 1 for a Maggie Valley elk that trekked through the Pisgah National Forest to wind up in Henderson County.
The young bull’s travels ended when he wandered onto I-26 near Hendersonville, just before 5 a.m. Sunday, July 1. A woman driving a minivan struck the elk, and while nobody in the vehicle was injured, the elk was hurt badly enough that he had to be put down.
Now nearing its third birthday, the Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel in Murphy is seeing strong numbers as it heads toward the July 23 launch of its first addition since opening in September 2015 — a 41,000-square-foot entertainment area featuring bowling, arcade games and a full-service restaurant.
With no end in sight to rising enrollment, Western Carolina University is hoping a public-private partnership with Wilmington-based Zimmer Development Company will help meet the housing needs of future upperclassmen.
For even the most woods-savvy of plant lovers, a blooming mountain camellia is a rare to non-existent sight.
A member of the tea family, it’s picky about its habitat, easily susceptible to drought and fire, and reticent to reproduce. All that adds up to a tenuous existence in scattered, isolated populations through the Southern Appalachians. To find a mountain camellia, you’ve got to know where to go and what to look for, and be willing to tromp through the backcountry until you see it.
A long-awaited mural is now complete in Sylva, marking the end of the Sylva Public Art Committee’s inaugural project.
A Cherokee resident will spend four years in federal prison for his involvement in the 2015 stabbing death of 25-year-old Tyler Gaddis, of Whittier.
Dismay over preliminary road construction plans that would force 54 Sylva businesses to relocate has sparked a revival of the Jackson County Smart Roads Alliance, the group that in the early 2000s fought off N.C. Department of Transportation plans to build a new highway — dubbed the Southern Loop — connecting Cullowhee to U.S. 74.
Bill Holbrook has been a lot of things in his 71 years on earth — a factory worker, a manager, a father, a husband — but he’s always been a farmer.
“I enjoy getting my hands dirty. I enjoy the challenge,” said Holbrook, who owns Cold Mountain Farms. “I like it better than working on concrete in a factory.”
A committee focused on increasing affordable housing options in Jackson County has been created following a unanimous vote of the Jackson County Commissioners.
The three Cherokee tribes joined voices last week to decry the recent surge of family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Hookup fees are set to plummet for water and sewer customers in Jackson County following adoption of the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority’s new budget.
I entered the lottery on a whim, figuring that, like 90 percent of my fellow entrants, I’d end up with nothing but a polite “thank you for entering” and an invitation to try again next year. I was stunned, frankly, to receive an email that instead began with the word “congratulations” and an invitation to start dreaming about a front-row seat to one of the region’s most spectacular natural phenomena.
That would be the flashing of the synchronous fireflies, Photinus carolinus.
From the moment Western Carolina University Chancellor David O. Belcher announced he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer — more than two years ago, in April 2016 — the diagnosis ceased to be the burden of an individual person. It became the burden of the entire Catamount community, and when at age 60 Belcher finally lost his battle with cancer on Sunday, June 17, grief rippled quickly through the WCU campus and past the borders of Jackson County, threading through the mountain region and out into all the lives and communities that Belcher had touched during his years on earth.
Outpourings of support and sadness were in ample supply once news of Western Carolina University Chancellor David Belcher’s death reached the Catamount community at large. From political leaders to staff to students, nearly everyone had a story or a sentiment to share about how Belcher had impacted them.
Enforcing banishments could become easier for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians depending on the fate of a bill that would heighten the penalty for trespassing on Cherokee land.
Hookup fees are set to fall for water and sewer customers in Jackson County, but how much will depend on the outcome of a budget process that’s set to wrap up at 5:30 p.m. Monday, June 25.
