Western Carolina University and the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority will explore the possibility of combining their water systems following receipt of a $50,000 grant from the State Water Infrastructure Authority, which the TWSA board voted to accept at its June 18 meeting. 

After more than a year in flux, Jackson County’s health and social service boards are likely to be re-established within the next couple months. 

After more than a decade working together as members of Tribal Council, Alan “B” Ensley and Jim Owle are vying for the position of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ next vice chief. 

A program that’s been getting Western North Carolina kids outside since 2016 is now a statewide offering, with a whirlwind tour of 10 North Carolina state parks over the next couple weeks celebrating ecoEXPLORE’s arrival at all 41 park units. 

“There’s a lot of benefits to being outdoors, and it’s something that we’re seeing less and less in adults and children,” said Jonathan Marchal, youth education manager at the N.C. Arboretum in Asheville. “A lot of times it’s almost like a competition — you can go outside and be screen-free, or you can go indoors and be completely immersed in a screen. I think one approach that is helpful is utilizing those items like smartphones as tools to explore the environment, and not just as tools to explore the environment but to engage kids in doing conservation work.”

Principal Chief Richard Sneed and challenger Teresa McCoy will face off at the ballot box this September as Cherokee voters decide who should be their chief for the next four years, but last week they met onstage at the Joyce Dugan Performing Arts Center for a debate hosted by The Cherokee One Feather. 

UPDATED 1/24/2020: Following several meetings with the alleged victim and family, the District Attorney's Office declined to file charges in this case. Anyone accused of a crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. 

In a ceremony held at the Cherokee Indian Hospital today, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was awarded the Redefining American Healthcare award from the Healthcare Leadership Council.

Trillium Gap Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will be temporarily closed through Thursday, July 11, due to hazardous trail conditions. The area received heavy rainfall over the last couple of weeks causing extremely slippery, muddy conditions on the trail surface undergoing rehabilitation.

After more than 20 years of wood chopping and log sawing and award winning, the Haywood Community College Lumberjacks — the school’s timbersports team — will soon gain a permanent home. 

“The current practice facility is back where the old mill used to be, and it’s probably just as old as that was, late ‘60s,” said Matt Heimburg, dean of arts, sciences and natural resources at HCC. “It has a tin roof and a few logs somehow holding it up. So it’s long overdue for them to get a new practice space, for sure.”

In his first public statement on a bill he cosponsored in March, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., wrote an op-ed published in The Charlotte Observer June 19 decrying the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ opposition to legislation that would pave the way for a Catawba Indian Nation casino in Kings Mountain. 

An effort to get a proposed constitution on the Cherokee ballot as a referendum question this September will not come to fruition following Tribal Council’s June 13 vote to withdraw the legislation.

The Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River has a new leader.

Two years after former executive director Roger Clapp retired from the position, Ken Brown is taking over.

Jackson County Commissioners held a special-called meeting Tuesday, June 11, to vote on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2019-2020, a change from the original June 18 adoption timeline.

Voters made their choices during last week’s Primary Elections in Cherokee, with Teresa McCoy coming in as the top vote-getter in the race for principal chief and two incumbent Tribal Council members failing to survive through September’s General Election.

Federal campaign finance records show that Wallace Cheves, developer for a proposed Catawba Indian Nation casino in Kings Mountain, donated nearly $50,000 between 2015 and 2018 to the campaigns of the three U.S. senators sponsoring a bill aimed at making the casino a reality.

The bill, S.790, is sponsored by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and co-sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis and Sen. Richard Burr, both republicans of North Carolina.

The Jackson County Commissioners will adopt the budget for fiscal year 2019-2020 in a special-called meeting at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 11, a change from the original June 18 adoption timeline.

Preliminary results are in from Cherokee’s June 6 Primary Election.

From flip-flops to overnights to the quintessential northbound thru-hike, there are many different ways to experience the Appalachian Trail on its route from Georgia to Maine. An overnight along the trail at Roaring Fork Shelter near Max Patch was enough to meet a variety of hikers, all hiking the trail their own way. 

It’s no coincidence that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was the subject of The Smoky Mountain News’ first-ever front-page story in the paper’s inaugural issue June 2, 1999.

“A large herd gathered last week on a remote, historical farmstead maintained by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Cataloochee Valley,” Don Hendershot wrote for The Smoky Mountain News on Feb. 7, 2001. “The herd, however, were bipeds — nearly 900 people were in attendance for the first of three scheduled elk releases.”

Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort, an economic powerhouse that employs 5 percent of the workforce in the seven western counties and provides hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the tribe’s government and citizens, first opened its doors in 1997. 

For a road that has never existed, the infamous Southern Loop of Sylva sure has gotten a lot of ink over the past 20 years. 

When Patrick Lambert won the 2015 race for principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, he saw the victory as a direct mandate from voters. 

This roller coaster of a year at Western Carolina University started before it started, when the school’s beloved chancellor David O. Belcher announced Nov. 27, 2017, that he’d be stepping down at the end of the year.

A Brevard woman is dead following a car accident on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Devil's Courthouse. 

Horace Kephart has been dead for 88 years, but his name and his story still pull an undercurrent through Western North Carolina. 

Kephart is acclaimed as the father of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an outdoorsman gifted with an adventurous soul, and the author of such staples of regional literature as Our Southern Highlanders and Camping and Woodcraft. He’s derided, too, as a man with a severe drinking problem, a shirker of family responsibility and an outsider who profited off of sometimes less-than-flattering depictions of the locals. 

Planned improvements to the Southwestern Community College firing range aimed at reducing noise pollution and lead buildup will have to wait after bids for the project came in nearly double the estimated cost.

Early voting is now over in Cherokee, with polls to open for the Primary Election on Thursday, June 6, in what has already been an eventful election season. 

Jackson County’s proposed budget for 2019-2020 won’t require an increase from the current property tax rate of 0.38 cents per $100 of value, and at $65 million it clocks in at 0.78 percent higher than the 2018-19 approved budget and 2.01 percent lower than the amended 2018-19 budget. 

In the last few years, Jackson County has poured significant investment into its public schools, including $9 million in much-needed repairs to roofs, heating and water systems; new teaching positions paid for through local funds; security upgrades; and, in the last budget year, six school counselor positions, four school resource officers and one juvenile crime detective. 

An Iredell County man is dead following a swim at Lake Glenville Sunday, May 26.

Jeff Carpenter knows the woods. 

A native of Otto who’s spent most of his adult life the next county over in Sylva, he learned from his father Earvin Carpenter what it means to be an outdoorsman and a mountain man. He knows how to hunt and track and orienteer. He’s seen more than a few bears, heard more than a few coyotes, spent more than a few nights camped out in the backcountry. 

But over the last 15 years, he’s become convinced that there’s something out there that doesn’t show up in standard field guides. 

After 22 years with the Sylva Police Department and two years as its head, Sylva Police Chief Tammy Hooper will retire on Aug. 1, 2019. 

The return of warmer weather means that Jackson County’s cold weather homeless shelter has been closed for two months, but commissioners have some tough discussions ahead as they plan what to do when the weather turns chilly once more.

A bipartisan majority of senators in the N.C. General Assembly have signed a letter opposing a Congressional bill that would pave the way for a new casino to be built in Cleveland County. 

Tribal member Robert Osley Saunooke is not giving up on his efforts to see Teresa McCoy barred from candidacy in the upcoming election for principal chief. 

In a divided opinion, the Cherokee Supreme Court decided that Teresa McCoy will not have to participate in a second hearing before the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections to retain her place on the ballot.

From flip-flops to overnights to the quintessential northbound thru-hike, there are many different ways to experience the Appalachian Trail on its route from Georgia to Maine. An overnight along the trail at Roaring Fork Shelter near Max Patch was enough to meet a variety of hikers, all hiking the trail their own way. 

Jackson County employees are now paying significantly higher premiums for their health insurance following a plan change that went into effect May 1. 

Commissioners voted 4-1 April 2 to make multiple changes to its self-funded insurance plan in hopes of digging itself out of a health plan deficit years in the making. 

A Green Energy Park makeover under discussion in Jackson County could be a good bit cheaper than originally discussed, with a final master plan for the project presented May 7 estimating the five-phase project at $7.56 million — 62.7 percent less than the original $12.06 million projection.

A proposed ordinance that would have laid out the criminal penalties for violating laws regulating election campaign practices was withdrawn in Tribal Council May 2 following criticism about the timing of the proposal. 

Following a battle that involved hearings before both the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections and the Cherokee Supreme Court, Teresa McCoy is now certified as a candidate for principal chief, but her status on the ballot is still not certain. 

If you want to see an elk, the Elk Capital of North Carolina would probably be a good place to look. Pretty soon, that could mean a trip to Haywood County. 

“I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to promote unique things in our area, our national parks and our beautiful mountains in general,” said Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville. “It’s a way to use really a symbol of North Carolina to promote our region.”

A recently completed report commissioned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Office of Internal Audit and Ethics has concluded that financial policies in Cherokee Central Schools’ Athletic Department are inadequate. 

Political leaders in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are optimistic following a recent congressional hearing on legislation that would pave the way for the Catawba Indian Nation to open a casino in Cleveland County’s Kings Mountain, an effort that the EBCI opposes.

At $4.06 million, Sylva’s proposed budget for 2019-20 will be nearly $200,000 lower than the adopted budget for 2018-19.

Development of a plan to guide Cullowhee’s future is now underway, with a three-day marathon of activities held April 22-24 gathering feedback from the community toward a draft small area plan for the community. 

More than 12,000 donors contributed over a five-year period to raise over $60 million for scholarships at Western Carolina University.

Every year, Sylva’s population quadruples on the last Saturday in April as more than 10,000 people flock to the tiny town for Greening Up the Mountains, a long-running festival featuring live music on two stages, a 5K run and more than 125 vendors offering crafts, food and information about local nonprofits. 

Planning the event is a year-round endeavor for town staff, and as this year’s April 27 date drew closer, all the ducks seemed to be sorting themselves into their respective rows — until a different kind of bird threw a wrench in the plans. 

The weather matched the mood when the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians broke ground on a $39 million crisis stabilization unit Wednesday, April 24.