Holly Kays
For the past decade, Sylva’s Pinnacle Park has had Sae Smyrl envisioning a lofty future for the hiking area. A mountain biker for the past 40 years, Smyrl would walk the trail and think how great it would be to ride his bike through the 1,100-acre forest. Bikes are allowed on the existing trail, but it’s way too steep for the sport to be fun.
A plan is now afoot to make Smyrl’s dream a reality, with the Nantahala Area Southern Off Road Bicycling Association pursuing a goal to bring some 30 miles of biking trail, featuring loops of various difficulty levels, to the Fisher Creek watershed.
The greenway in Jackson County has now been fully open for a month, and use is skyrocketing on the one-mile path along the Tuckasegee River in Cullowhee. From May to July, monthly use more than doubled to 5,485 visitors — that figure is more than five times the 1,034 people who used the greenway in November 2015, the first month data was taken.
Jackson County’s new county manager is now on the job, and commissioners are looking forward to start working with him on goals and tasks for the years ahead.
For Tony Campolo, spending last week amid a gathering of senior citizens from across the Southeast was just about the most exciting thing imaginable. And that’s even taking into account that he views “exciting” as an overused word that’s best avoided.
A second decision made during last week’s Cherokee Tribal Council meeting could affect how council’s decision to order a third-party investigation into Principal Chief Patrick Lambert’s administration fares on veto.
Some members of the Cherokee Tribal Council are saying that something’s amiss in how hire-fire decisions are being made in tribal government, and in a narrow decision the council voted to order a third-party investigation into those issues.
The air on the Cataloochee Divide Trail is heavy with humidity and the promise of an afternoon storm, but the pervading mood is contrastingly buoyant as a group of 27 teens and their leaders sets out on a sunny Thursday morning.
It’s a tone that Cassius Cash, superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, had set before anybody left the trailhead.
Tribal Council narrowly passed a resolution last month that would shorten the term of embattled Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise board member Angela Kephart, but when council reconvenes on Aug. 4, Kephart will be asking its members to reconsider.
The former director of an organization charged with spurring community development on the Qualla Boundary has pled guilty to embezzling nearly $1 million from the institution she once led, bringing almost three years of investigation and prosecution to a close.
Evening is suspended over Lake Junaluska as doors open for the 8 p.m. Taizé service, its coming fall foretold by the soft-sided clouds gathered over the sinking sun.
A newly purchased cargo van has animal advocates in Jackson County applauding — and rolling up their sleeves to load dogs and cats for travel toward pastures green with adoptive families and no-kill shelters.
There’s something missing from the streets of Sylva, the town’s board has been noticing, and lately they’ve been talking about how to fill the dearth of public art downtown.
Spirits were high in Dillsboro last week as Steam Engine No. 1702 chugged noisily to a stop on the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad.
Cloud cover keeps the summer morning cool as Mark Hopey makes the rounds below Cowee Mound. By 8:30 a.m., he and his two wildlife technicians have already been working at the Franklin-area site for nearly three hours, making hay while the sun doesn’t shine — or at least doesn’t shine with the heat it will gather soon.
Hopey glances down a small trail leading to a net — higher than his head, wide as a volleyball net and strung with fine black netting — before walking on past. No birds there, but he’ll inspect it closer on the way back, just to make sure.
Tribal government is expected to gain on openness and accountability following passage of a pair of laws in Cherokee Tribal Council this month. After more than a year of work, the tribe now has a code of ethics and a mechanism to ensure the new standards are enforced.
After more than two years of tests and evaluations, the end is now in sight for an effort to remove 450 tons of lead-contaminated soil from a shooting range at Southwestern Community College. The job will cost $237,000, but by the end of the summer the soil should be excavated, treated, hauled away and replaced with new, uncontaminated soil.
The jury is still out on a property tax challenge being waged by Harris Regional Hospital, which claims its property is only worth a quarter of what the county says it is.
After sixteen months of meetings, a change of planning director and a nearly complete turnover of membership on the Jackson County Planning Board, an updated industrial development ordinance is now in place for the county.
Round tables and large, neon sticky notes characterized last week’s kickoff of a planning process to cut timber and create elk habitat in a remote corner of northeastern Haywood County.
About 50 people representing groups including the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, MountainTrue, The Nature Conservancy, the Ruffed Grouse Society and Haywood County government — among a host of others — found their way to the room at the N.C. Arboretum in Asheville, taking a seat on the large circle of chairs waiting for them.
Petitions bearing nearly half a million signatures urging protection of the endangered red wolf made their way to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week, about one year after the USFWS announced it would suspend a program reintroducing red wolves to the wild.
When Bill Yang decided to leave the world of private industry to join Western Carolina University’s School of Engineering and Technology eight years ago, he fully expected that the transition to academia would bring with it a slash in salary.
Jackson County’s health department is gearing up to start millions of dollars of construction for its animal shelter and health buildings, but before those projects get off the ground leadership will change with the coming of a new health director.
After 20 years with the department, Jackson County’s director of social services will be retiring from county employment at the end of the month, but the department won’t want for experienced leadership going forward.
After months of fundraising, cash is now in hand to get a monument to the country’s founding documents in place at Mark Watson Park in Sylva.
Bear hunters on the Qualla Boundary may be able to run their dogs through tribal reserve land for a full half year following contentious discussion and a divided vote in Cherokee Tribal Council this month.
Cherokee Tribal Council is closer to finalizing a decision to revoke part of a former vice chief’s will, following its July meeting last week.
Cashiers recently completed its own effort to address food trucks with an ordinance approved by the Jackson County Commissioners last month.
After seeing the showdown over food truck rules playing out in Waynesville, Sylva is gearing up to take a look at its own code of ordinances, hoping to forestall any such drama in its neck of the woods.
After a June 9 accident that left a man dead and a community grieving, the effort to address a road that’s long been seen as dangerous is seeing a renewed surge of focus.
A growing collection of roadside signs has been popping up along rural drives and main thoroughfares in Western North Carolina over the last decade, and while their presence might be barely noticeable to the untrained eye, they trace the history of a story that shaped the region before most of the roads they adorn were even built.
The Trail of Tears.
Ever since a controversial bill proposing to slash tuition rates at selected University of North Carolina schools popped up in May, leaders at Western Carolina University have been working to parse its language, ferret out its potential impacts and prod legislators toward a version they could support.
A partnership that could quadruple patient volume and expand medical staffing for the uninsured of Jackson County has been the subject of a flurry of meetings and conversations since The Good Samaritan Clinic of Jackson County announced last week that it’s moving toward a partnership with Hendersonville-based Blue Ridge Health Center.
Mickey Luker has been working on a remodel of Caney Fork General Store ever since he purchased the property in 2011, but now the county commissioner candidate is claiming that politically motivated nefariousness caused the county health department to deny him the wastewater permit he needs to add a deli line to his business.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ website received the lowest score of any of those reviewed by The Smoky Mountain News, coming in with an overall 1.4 out of 5.
Sylva’s website, last overhauled in 2010, will be getting a facelift this year after the town board voted to spend $3,000 on a redesign of the town’s website and logo.
Kelly Fuqua doesn’t have a problem saying she’s pretty proud of Jackson County’s website. Before she overhauled it in 2011, the site was getting “complaint after complaint,” and she sank a lot of work into fixing the problem.
Go back in time 25 years, and a town with a website — any website, no matter how terrible the fonts or funky the navigation — would have been seen as glitzy and ahead of its time. But these days, having a website is the bare minimum of what citizens expect from their government’s online presence.
Rods, reels, and wader-clad teenagers dotted Big East Fork’s meander to Lake Logan through the warm summer mornings last week, a picture of mountain tranquility framed between green-shrouded banks backlit by the mountain-bordered reservoir downstream.
“It’s pretty relaxing,” said Gabby Dilemme, 14, of Brevard. The rod she grasped was her own, an instrument she’s used before when fishing with friends. But at Rivercourse, the annual four-day fly fishing and conservation camp organized by N.C. Trout Unlimited, she was hoping to dig a little deeper into the sport.
With a one-month gap between the retirement of Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten and the arrival of his successor Don Adams, Jackson County Commissioners voted this week to choose an interim manager to bridge the gap. County Attorney Heather Baker will fill the role.
When teen members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians come of age, they find themselves in sudden possession of a six-figure bank account. But the overnight windfall comes with risk, many tribal leaders believe, and Tribal Council took a monumental vote to change the way money is paid out to their young people — in installments rather than as a one-time payment.
Students pursuing health careers at Western Carolina University will soon have ample chance for hands-on learning right on campus if plans for a new medical office building on Little Savannah Road move forward as expected.
When Sarah Scott first started work at Haywood County Cooperative Extension in February 2015, planning for the 2016 Haywood County Garden Tour was one of the first items to come across her desk. Untold hours of preparation later, the horticulture extension agent and horde of volunteers working with her are days away from showing hundreds of people the best of Haywood’s gardens.
“Haywood County has some very talented gardeners and some very beautiful gardens,” Scott said. “I enjoyed going out and seeing so many of them. It was terrible to have to choose only a few.”
Jackson County won’t officially become the North Carolina Trout Capital this year, but legislators expressed their support of the county’s angling opportunities by declaring it the state’s Premier Trout Fishing Destination on Wednesday, June 1, in Raleigh.
Nearly a month after an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker found his night interrupted by an attacking bear, the backcountry shelter in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where the incident occurred is open once more.
About 20 tribal members filled the audience benches in Cherokee Tribal Court last week, watching the first court hearing in a lawsuit decrying pay raises Cherokee Tribal Council gave itself in 2014. The suit’s defendants were asking Judge Sharon Barrett to dismiss the claims.
The finish line is in sight to choose a new county manager for Jackson County.
Nearly two-thirds of Jackson County voters who visited the polls last week said yes to a referendum question asking to raise the county’s sales tax by one-fourth of a cent. Education leaders are rejoicing at the outcome.
A casino board member who came under fire for possible “conduct unbecoming” of a public official will keep her post, following conclusion of an investigation ordered by the Cherokee Tribal Council.
Adam Bigelow bears down on the gas pedal of his biodiesel-fueled Jetta, urging it up the steep contours of the Blue Ridge Parkway in search of higher ground. It’s a gardener’s car, through-and-through, the dash covered with dried plant parts, the floorboards papered with garden-related fliers and catalogues.
The only thing that’s missing is a live plant, and even that’s not too far-flung a reality. It wasn’t that long ago, Bigelow recalls, that he looked down from his seat to see a little pea plant growing up, apparently having received just the right amount of water from some mysterious source to take root in the car.
The widow of a former Vice Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians may be out of a home if Tribal Council decides to slash the portion of a will that left her the house.
