Since announcing its closure after 51 years in business, Joey’s Pancake House owner Brenda O’Keefe and her staff have been bombarded with well wishes and awards, including the highest honor in North Carolina — Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

Haywood County’s 2017 property revaluation was like a bucket of cold water in the face of every local government official in the county, but nowhere more so than Maggie Valley.

Some institutions are meant to last forever, while others have their place in time and then they’re gone. 

After Tuesday, June 13, Joey’s Pancake House in Maggie Valley will be gone.

Opened atop Buck Mountain in 1961, Wild West-themed Ghost Town in the Sky used to draw as many as 600,000 visitors a year to Maggie Valley, but after a combination of maladministration, mechanical difficulties and even a landslide, the park began opening intermittently, and then not at all, leaving a gaping hole in the local tourism economy.

Each year, counties and municipalities must pass their upcoming year’s budget by July 1.

If all goes well, Maggie Valley will soon be known as a place where some of the finest spirits in the world are crafted.

The straightforward Russ Gilliland is a fifth-generation Haywood County resident, but his path to becoming Maggie Valley’s newest police chief has been anything but.

A new program by the Town of Maggie Valley offers citizens a candid look at what the town does, how it does it and how it pays for it.

As days slid by without rain last fall, and the days stacked into weeks, Neil Carpenter watched the water gauge on Jonathan Creek like the ticking hands of a doomsday clock.

SEE ALSO:
• Haywood water systems join forces to aid each other in times of need
• TWSA reviews water shortage plan following drought
• Haywood water systems by the numbers

Carpenter usually has 4 million gallons of water a day at his fingertips — triple what he needs to serve the 3,800 homes and businesses in greater Maggie Valley.