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. 

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. 

This year’s eight-week WNC Get Fit Challenge is set to return Monday, Sept. 10, challenging not just Jackson County residents but people across the region to get moving. 

“It’s really just encouraging participants to be more active,” said Janelle Messer, health education supervisor for the Jackson County Department of Public Health. “It has a little bit of competitive feel to it. You can compete for weekly prizes. It’s not just who has the most steps or minutes but who’s the most diligent at putting theirs in, who’s the most improved and that kind of thing over the course of the eight weeks.”

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. 

In that moment, he knew that he was standing in the midst of something that would never be forgotten, something that he would carry from this place and bear for the rest of his life. 

— The Line That Holds Us, p. 26

When Darl Moody drew a bead on what he thought was a wild hog in a patch of ginseng, felt his rifle recoil, and saw his quarry collapse; he clamored to the ridge top to find, not a hog, but a dead man: Carol Brewer, nick-named Sissy, “a half-wit born to a family that Jesus Christ couldn’t have saved.” Both men, the living and the dead, were trespassers and poachers on Coward land. The landowner was away at a family funeral.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.