Great Smokies Mountain National Park has seen new changes in recent years, from soaring record attendance placing it head and shoulders above the field for the most visited national park to a first-of-its-kind parking tag program designed to generate revenue while also protecting visitors and natural resources that has generated the ire of some surrounding communities. 

It’s been a little under a year since Corrina Ruffieux took over for longtime Haywood County Tourism Development Authority Executive Director Lynn Collins, but Ruffieux’s wasted little time bolstering the TDA’s destination marketing strategy with robust and insightful data meant to show the county’s relative strengths and weaknesses while also hedging against uncertainty with new initiatives designed to keep the money flowing into Western North Carolina’s tourism-based economy — especially in post-mill Canton. 

When Pactiv Evergreen announced it would close its Canton paper mill last year, Haywood County Schools was already facing a host of other challenges, among them a declining student population, costs incurred from damages caused during the Pigeon River flood in 2021, and the impending end of COVID-era relief funds. 

Last week, the National Park Service announced that 400 national parks reported a total of 325.5 million visits in 2023, an increase of 13 million or 4% over 2022. 

The MADE X MTNS Partnership released the results of the Western North Carolina Outdoor Recreation Participation Survey, conducted in partnership with the Center for Economic Research & Policy Analysis at Appalachian State University and the Institute of Tourism and Recreation Research at the University of Montana, to establish a foundational dataset supporting the economic impact of outdoor recreation participation in the region. 

Net emissions of greenhouse gases have fallen 38% between 2005 and 2020 in North Carolina, according to the latest update of the N.C. Greenhouse Gas Inventory. 

Haywood County hadn’t logged a coronavirus-related death in the better part of a year. But since Dec. 19, 2023, it has seen five.  

In 2023, visitation to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park grew 2.2% to reach its second-highest number ever — but the number of visits starting in the North Carolina side of the park fell 5.1% compared to 2022. 

As North Carolina prepares for federal, state and local elections in 2024, emerging trends in partisan registration that began in late 2017 have proven persistent, with likely electoral consequences for both major parties. 

It’s no secret that North Carolina is growing, but as its population grows, the composition of its electorate is changing as well.