Drought has deepened throughout Central and Western North Carolina, according to a new map published today.

It was an hour and a half after sunrise, and the day’s first rays had not yet touched Judaculla Rock, hidden away in a hollow near Caney Fork in Jackson County. 

“I would encourage you to come back at different times,” T.J. Holland, cultural resources supervisor for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, told the group assembled around him. “It’s one of these fascinating things — time of the year, time of day, weather all affects how this looks, and I’ve not been here twice that I’ve not seen something different.”

The Center for Domestic Peace — the successor to REACH of Jackson County — is hoping to take over domestic violence services in Jackson County by next summer. There’s still a long way to go to meet that goal, but board members say that getting the organization on its feet is a vital step toward addressing the issue locally. 

Sylva’s town board voted unanimously Sept. 12 to deny a petition from Dillardtown resident Aaron Littlefield to have his property voluntarily annexed into town limits. 

UPDATE: Principal Chief Richard Sneed vetoed this resolution on Oct. 2, after The Smoky Mountain News' press time. Tribal Council will hold a special session at 8:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 4, to  hold a vote on whether to uphold or override the veto.

At its last meeting Sept. 12, Tribal Council voted to create the Cannabis Commission, a body that will work to get the tribe into the hemp business. 

After more than seven years at the helm, Dan Harbaugh has left his role as executive director of the Tuckasiegee Water and Sewer Authority. His last day was Friday, Sept. 27, with the TWSA board hiring former Town of Sylva Public Works Director Dan Shaeffer to lead the organization temporarily. 

A ban on backcountry fires in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was announced today following the release of a new drought map showing that 45 counties in central and western North Carolina are experiencing moderate drought.

Conservation leaders from across the state and nation gathered in Maggie Valley earlier this month to dedicate a land protection project that’s been in the works for a decade and a half — but is in many ways just beginning. 

The Conservation Fund now owns tracts of land totaling 710 acres in Maggie Valley’s Campbell Creek and Jonathan Creek watersheds, with work underway to transfer that property to the Maggie Valley Sanitary District for permanent conservation. Another 1,350 acres are in the pipeline for protection, with property owners having agreed to sell it once the money is there to buy it. 

Plans are progressing for a new animal shelter in Jackson County, the first new construction to be completed in the $7.65 million vision for a revamped Green Energy Park campus. 

A Blue Ridge Parkway law enforcement supervisor who admitted to using illegal substances still retains his position as head ranger of the Parkway’s largest district, despite a March Board of Inquiry recommendation that his law enforcement commission be permanently revoked, according to records The Smoky Mountain News obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act. 

There are a few moments in history that every American alive at the time remembers in crisp detail. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The first moon landing. The terrorist attacks of September 11. 

All three bore significance during astronaut Charlie Duke’s visit to Western Carolina University last week, on the 18th anniversary of the twin towers’ collapse. Two years before his death in November 1963, Kennedy changed the course of American history when he pledged during a May 1961 speech that the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. NASA met that challenge with just over four months to spare when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the lunar surface, on July 20, 1969. 

Passing off mass-produced tchotchkes as authentic Native American crafts could soon be illegal in Cherokee following Tribal Council’s unanimous vote to approve the Native Arts and Crafts Act last week. 

The time to tweak plans for Sylva’s controversial N.C. 107 project is past, residents were told during a well-attended town meeting Thursday, Sept. 12. 

Five families could find themselves in a brand new home in Sylva if a planned endeavor by Mountain Projects comes to fruition. 

A lockdown at Southwestern Community College’s Jackson County campus has been lifted after law enforcement determined that students who reported a weapon on campus were mistaken.

Hometown hero Riley Howell’s legacy will live on in the form a 4-mile race through the streets of the town he once called home, with the event raising money to support victims of violent acts like the one that took 21-year-old Howell’s life on April 30. 

The Mighty Four Miler will be held in conjunction with the Gateway to the Smokies Half Marathon, which started in 2015 and added a 4-mile race in 2017. Neither race was held this year after event organizer Haywood County Chamber of Commerce decided to discontinue it, but endurance event company Glory Hound Events later took on ownership of the race. 

Jackson County hopes to offset the cost of moving its Dillsboro recycling center with proceeds from selling a piece of land in Sylva that has been county-owned since 2012.

Election Day dawned clear and sunny in Cherokee Sept. 5, with polls opening at 6 a.m. for voters to choose the tribe’s next chief, vice chief and Tribal Council. 

Principal Chief Richard Sneed produced a decisive victory in Cherokee’s Sept. 5 election, pulling in 55.11 percent of the vote against opponent Teresa McCoy, who took the remaining 44.89 percent. 

Richard Sneed will remain the principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians for four more years following an Election Day victory, according to unofficial results.

The Nantahala River in the Nantahala Gorge is now open to the public for all uses for the first time since landslides on Saturday, Aug. 24, resulted in significant damage and blockages in the area.

Beneath the woodsy world of tree trunks, ferns and leaf litter is another, hidden realm. It’s the world of fungi, where these shadow organisms — not plants, but yet not animals — spread their tendrils through the soil, through the moist decay of fallen branches, into the bark of standing trees, both living and dead. Where the two worlds meet is where the mushrooms grow.

Last year was a good one for the tourism industry in Jackson County, with visitor spending in 2018 increasing by 5.3 percent over 2017 numbers, according to recently released figures from the state tourism office Visit North Carolina.

With right-of-way acquisition for the N.C. 107 project in Sylva set to begin in January, the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority is hoping to adopt new policies this December aimed at assisting ratepayers impacted by the endeavor. 

The U.S. Forest Service is waiving fees at campgrounds across its southern region — which includes the Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest — for people displaced by Hurricane Dorian.

Due to hazardous conditions in the Nantahala Gorge from multiple landslides, the U.S. Forest Service is issuing an Emergency Closure Order prohibiting access to the Nantahala River. The closure is in effect for national forest land between Beechertown Launch Ramp and the Silvermine Take-out Ramp. This closure also applies to Ferebee Memorial Park.

Hazards created by recent landslides into the Nantahala River within the Nantahala Gorge have resulted in a suspension of all commercial rafting and kayaking operations, and a recommendation that individual paddlers avoid the area.

With a new school year just begun, the 300 students who participate in Waynesville Middle School’s robust agriculture program now have an array of new woodshop equipment at their disposal. 

“In two weeks this will be like Santa’s little helper’s woodshop,” Noal Castater, agriculture teacher at WMS since 2010, said in an interview the Friday before the first day of school. 

Housing is an issue across Western North Carolina, and Jackson County is no exception. Since June 2018, a newly created Housing Committee has been working toward solutions, and during an Aug. 13 work session the group showed county commissioners an early draft of a document to establish a housing trust fund for Jackson. 

After a closed session discussion during its Aug. 20 meeting, the Jackson County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to buy a pair of properties along Haywood Road in Dillsboro as part of a plan to remake the county’s existing Green Energy Park. 

The organization tasked with managing homeless services in Jackson County for the year ahead received official status as a federal nonprofit this month. 

Tribal Council is slated to vote on a budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 on Thursday, Sept. 12, but no draft document has been released to the media. 

Many plotlines weave through the story of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but if the park were a book, some of those plotlines be written in bold, with others buried in small type. 

“We probably go overboard in telling the story of the white Appalachian settlers to this area,” said Susan Sachs, the park’s acting chief of resource education. “We do a better job of telling the stories of the Cherokee, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. But then when it comes to the African-American story, we know that we are failing there.”

Western Carolina University’s newest chancellor is fairly certain that, of the teachers and students she knew years ago while pursuing her undergraduate degree, none would have guessed that she’d one day end up leading a thriving campus of 11,000 students. 

More than 300 people crowded Innovation Station in Dillsboro on Monday, Aug. 19, to sip a beer and shake hands with WCU’s new chancellor, Kelli Brown, who holds a Ph.D. in education. 

It’s been two years since discussions began about the possibility of removing the Cullowhee Dam, and it could take years more to complete the additional studies needed to make a decision about removal and to raise the funds necessary to actually do it. 

When Election Day arrives in Cherokee Sept. 5, all 12 Tribal Council seats will be up for grabs, as well as the offices of principal chief and vice chief and three school board seats. 

Nearly four decades ago, vast swathes of the 8,600-acre Waynesville watershed were laid bare, the trees timbered for profit and the soil harvested to build the earth-filled dam now holding back the reservoir.

Fast forward to 2019, and the landscape has changed dramatically. There is no more bare soil, and no more open canopy. It’s a full-grown forest, sunlight filtering through a green canopy below which the only sounds are those produced by the birds, insects and wind. The white pines planted to stabilize the stripped soil have thrived, perhaps too much. In 2014, a good many of them were cut down during a thinning conducted on a 50-acre portion of the property, as the seedlings were planted too close together to serve them well as they grew larger. But white pine is still a common species in the 8,600-acre watershed.

The Unity Healing Center in Cherokee has become the subject of intense focus from the U.S. Indian Health Service’s regional office in Nashville following a June report from The Wall Street Journal alleging that suspected sexual abuse at the facility resulted in a suicide attempt by one of the teenaged residents — but no report to law enforcement. 

Nearly a year to the day since a standing-room-only crowd filled Sylva Town Hall for a forum on the proposed N.C. 107 project, a town meeting Thursday, Aug. 8, drew a full house of folks determined to speak out against the road during the meeting’s public comment section. 

The more you know about the Camino de Santiago, the harder it is to define. 

The simple explanation is that it’s a walking path that travels through Spain. But in reality that description is a mix of truth and fiction. 

Over the last four years, Richard Sneed and Teresa McCoy have found themselves on the opposite side of many an argument, and in September the incumbent chief will face the former Big Cove councilmember once more, at the ballot box. 

Based on information presented at a joint government meeting in Jackson County July 23, The Smoky Mountain News reported in its July 31 issue that an updated list of businesses slated for relocation as a result of the N.C. 107 project in Sylva now numbered 39, not the 55 businesses and organizations named in the preliminary plans released last year. 

The Cherokee Tribal Council voted to allocate an additional $50 million to Kituwah LLC, the tribe’s economic development arm, during its regular monthly meeting Thursday, Aug. 1. 

Jackson County residents will have the chance to get a behind-the-scenes look at how county government works during the third annual Citizens Academy, which has extended the call for applications through Sept. 5. 

A new state park has been created in Buncombe and Haywood counties following Gov. Roy Cooper’s signature on a state Senate bill July 19, but it will be years before Pisgah View State Park will bridge the gap from concept to reality. 

CORRECTION: Due to inaccurate information presented at the July 23 government meeting when the road project was discussed, the number of businesses slated for relocation in the story is incorrect. The project will require relocation of businesses located on 39 parcels of property, but the total number of businesses on those parcels is 55. The list of businesses included with the story names all 55 businesses.

The number of businesses to be displaced by the upcoming N.C. 107 project in Sylva could be fewer than the 54 named in last spring’s preliminary plans, but the cost and duration of the project will be greater than initially expected, according to an update N.C. Department of Transportation Division Engineer Brian Burch gave to an assemblage of Jackson County’s elected leaders last week. 

Sports wagering is now legal in casinos on the Qualla Boundary following Gov. Roy Cooper’s signature on Senate Bill 154 Friday, July 26. Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos is hoping to open sports betting areas at both its Cherokee and Murphy facilities by late fall. 

Cherokee’s Sept. 5 Election Day is coming up, and the 24 candidates running for 12 available Tribal Council seats are working to get their message out. The Smoky Mountain News has been reaching out to candidates with a series of questions about various issues facing the tribe, with the responses received thus far included here. 

An investigation into a June 2018 incident involving the Blue Ridge Parkway’s Pisgah District Ranger Greg Wozniak concluded that Wozniak violated both Tennessee drug laws and federal rules found in the U.S. Department of Interior Personnel Bulletin and in a 1986 executive order mandating a drug-free federal workplace.