Randall E. Murff remembers the guns shooting at him.

“The Germans really could shoot those guns, they were good,” he said. “If you gave them 17 seconds, they’d knock you right down.”

After her teenage daughter was banned from Poteet Park for a year, a Sylva mother sought an audience with the town’s commissioners. 

“Everywhere I try to address my concerns, I’m ignored,” Deborah Woolverton told Sylva commissioners during a recent board meeting. 

It’s about making everyone feel welcome for Lynn Stanberry.

“You get a warm feeling coming in here,” she smiled. “There are college kids, locals, people on vacation. It all kind of mixes and blends well together.”

Sylva is an eclectic community that’s a blend of a local, tourist and college feel surrounded by towering mountains. 

Vandalism is apparently still a problem in Sylva public parks.It’s a problem that cost the town about ten grand last year to install four security cameras as a deterrent. But it wasn’t enough to do the trick, so town leaders will spend another $13,400 on more cameras this year. 

He was completely shocked. Standing in front of an empty warehouse in Dillsboro, which will soon be the site of his new brewery, Dieter Kuhn couldn’t believe almost 500 people had shown up at the recent launch party of his new facility. 

Whatever qualities make for an ideal public space, Sylva’s Bridge Park seems to have them. At least Sarah Graham thinks so. 

“That’s exactly what everybody had in mind,” Graham said. 

Jackson County and the town of Sylva agreed this month to merge the entities’ separate Alcoholic Beverage Control boards. The deal means that Jackson and Sylva will share in the overall profits generated throughout the county, including those generated at the yet-to-open ABC store in Cashiers.

By Jake Flannick • Correspondent

If wardrobes are a form of self-expression, then Gloria Stockton has a whimsical flair.

She would say the opposite, of course. But the bright pink, polka dot smock, colorful high-top shoes and green-dyed hair in which she sometimes leaves her home in Sylva suggests otherwise.

Plenty of green is popping up in Bryson City, but it’s not all due to the growing season. Green wayfinding signs now scattered throughout town point to landmarks ranging from the Road to Nowhere to the Swain County Courthouse. It’s the culmination of a year-long project to make in-town navigation easier and streets more attractive.