Drawing more than 300 million visitors each year, the National Park Service is both a reservoir of natural beauty and an economic anchor for the communities surrounding its lands — and many of those communities are now banding together to demand that Congress address the parks’ $11.3 billion maintenance backlog.

“To know what this means to us — the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — and for us to have to ask them for some sustainable revenue to keep these parks going, it’s almost like asking somebody to take care of their baby,” Jackson County Commissioner Boyce Dietz said before the board unanimously passed a resolution in favor of sustained funding Dec. 18, 2017.

The infamously steep trail leading up to Blackrock from Pinnacle Park will soon find itself with a gentler incline following the planned reroute of 0.37 miles of the most severely angled piece of the pathway.

The ongoing and exhaustive trademark dispute between Sylva’s Innovation Brewing and Bell’s Brewery is now over.

Downtown Sylva looks quite a bit different these days than this time last year.

A routine board appointment turned contentious last week when Sylva Commissioner Harold Hensley announced that he’d like to see someone else appointed to Commissioner David Nestler’s expiring term on the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Association Board.

Film fever is hitting Sylva as the release of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” draws closer.

Sylva Mayor Lynda Sossamon took home an overwhelming share of the votes in her bid for re-election Nov. 6, easily winning four more years in the mayor’s seat.

With its grand opening last Friday, Balsam Falls Brewing Company becomes the third business of its kind in Sylva.

Sylva voters might feel a bit of déjà vu when they enter the polling place this year, with both names on the ballot for the mayor’s seat repeats from the 2015 election.

Sidewalks are coming to Skyland Drive in Sylva along a 0.7-mile section stretching from the Old Asheville Highway to its intersection with Chipper Curve Road.