The Jarrett House has stood in Dillsboro since 1884. Since before Dillsboro was Dillsboro. 

The town of Dillsboro, established in 1889, was named after William Allen Dills, a Confederate veteran who was born nearby. The town is located on the site of Dills’ farm.

Prior to the town’s establishment, the area was beginning to grow due to the railroad and tourism. Around the turn of the century the town boasted more than 700 residents. 

Dillsboro sits at the crossroads of U.S. 441 and N.C. 23. Nestled between the past and future, it is a town that continues to evolve.

“I think it’s just a classic, old American town. Laid-back,” said Jim Hartbarger, sitting in the parlor of the Jarrett House.

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The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority is pretty sure it needs to start searching for an executive director to help head up the organization. 

“We believe we’re at the point where someone wakes up in the morning and this is what they do,” said Clifford Meads, chair of the TDA’s marketing committee.

The cell phone tower proposed for the Whiteside Cove area is off the table for now. Verizon has “indefinitely suspended” plans to locate a tower in the area after requests from Jackson County planning officials that various issues be addressed in the company’s application, chiefly that the design incorporate a camouflage-style tower instead of the originally-proposed mono-pole design.

The type of visitors being eyed by Jackson County tourism officials fall into various categories. Each one of those “types” is being targeted through different ads.

There are advertisements featuring flyfishing. And gambling. Or how about kayaking or pottery?

It promised to be one of the most riveting nights of the year for members of the Jackson County Genealogical Society.

Half a dozen men filed through the door of the Sylva library hauling boxes and pulling hand trucks bulging with old tools and implements, some of them scrounged from their papaw’s blacksmith shop or granny’s cellar, and others collected over the years from auctions or relatives or flea markets, because there’s really no such thing as too many tools.

“People could stay for hours and talk about these items and their uses and the stories that go with them,” said Tim Osment, president of the genealogical society. “The tool itself represents a time when folks used their hands to build their own items. There is a sense of nostalgia that goes with that.”

Jackson County will soon get a new park at Barkers Creek.

County commissioners approved a lease this week for a roughly 3-acre riverside site owned by Duke Energy for the bargain rate of $10 a year. It adds to a growing network of boat launched, put-ins, and recreation parks dotting the length of the Tuckasegee River in Jackson County.

When Janie Sinacore-Jaberg walked the halls of Haywood Regional Medical Center Friday morning, the congratulations were flowing and the balloons flying.

“Our staff is incredibly excited. There are just smiles everywhere. You could feel it. It was palpable when you walked in the hospital today,” said Sinacore-Jaberg, the CEO of Haywood Regional.

The town of Sylva is now the second Jackson County locale to formally oppose hydraulic fracturing for natural gas within its boundaries. 

“I’m concerned about it,” said Commissioner Barbara Hamilton. “It’s not going to affect my life, but it will affect my children’s lives and my grandchildren’s lives, and I’m against it.”