A $30 million deal to bring a story-themed resort to Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians-owned land in Sevier County, Tennessee, will not go forward following a unanimous vote from Tribal Council Dec. 5 to kill a resolution Principal Chief Richard Sneed submitted in October. 

Growing up in West Asheville, Daniel Pierce was a frequent visitor to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The park was — and still is — free to enter, and to Pierce that was normal. 

“I’ll never forget the first time I went in a national park that charged an entrance fee,” said Pierce, who now holds a doctorate and is a history professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville who specializes in Smokies history. “I was just horrified by the thought that you would have to pay to go into a national park.”

The quarter-acre parking lot on the corner of Main and Landis streets in Sylva is officially town parking following a 4-1 vote from the town board Nov. 14. 

Tribal Council voted unanimously last month to expand the tribe’s roster of attorneys in hopes of moving child custody cases through the courts more efficiently. The cases often take multiple months to reach resolution, prompting complaints from community members. 

Christopher Lile, 23, was just months away from graduating to begin a career in wildlife conservation when he first learned that North Carolina has a native wolf population. He was sitting in a senior-year class at Gardner-Webb University, and a Defenders of Wildlife representative was speaking about the red wolf. 

A fire in the Shining Rock Wilderness Area burned about 200 acres last week after a 911 call at 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, alerted authorities to the blaze, but heavy rain Saturday helped halt its growth. 

For most kids, this is the season of anticipation, a magical time of year marked by stuffed turkeys, Christmas cookies, presents under the tree — and the promise of some long, lazy breaks from classes and homework. 

The Cold Mountain Fire is still burning in Haywood County, with a helicopter flight measuring it at approximately 126 acres as of noon today.

A wildfire near Cold Mountain in Haywood County was reported at 3 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 21, and as of 7:30 p.m. Thursday night it had grown to about 106 acres.

Westbound drivers are once again good to go through the Pigeon River Gorge on Interstate 40.

As it nears the end of its 50th anniversary year, the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont has its eyes set on the half-century to come. Within five years, the nonprofit aims to build out a second campus to supplement its existing facilities in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s Walker Valley. 

Railroad Avenue in Sylva will soon be converted to a one-way street following a unanimous vote from the town board Nov. 14. 

An effort to adopt a constitution for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians through a referendum question failed to come to fruition this year, but the grassroots group Citizens for a Constitution isn’t giving up, now setting its sights on a referendum question in 2021. 

The N.C. Department of Transportation will pay water and sewer hookup fees for businesses displaced by the N.C. 107 project, but it will be up to business and property owners to ask for reimbursement, right-of-way agent Jake Day told the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority board last week. 

Jackson County Commissioner Ron Mau hopes to unseat Rep. Joe Sam Queen in the 2020 election, announcing before a gathering at the Jackson County Republican Party headquarters Nov. 18 that he will run on the Republican ticket for District 119 of the N.C. House of Representatives. 

For the second time in three election cycles, a coin flip decided the outcome of a Sylva town board race. 

Unofficial tallies show a total of four uncounted ballots at play in the Sylva town elections going into the final vote count, which will begin at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 15, at the Jackson County Board of Elections Office on Skyland Drive.

The mud problems at Catamount Homes began early on Thursday, Oct. 31. 

Haywood County has seen its share of change over the past century, and nobody knows that better than Joe Morrow. 

Morrow, 86, grew up on 107 acres of steep mountain land that today is located just down the road and across from the Haywood County Fairgrounds. It’s been in the family since his grandparents were farming, but he and his wife Sue have now placed 53 acres in a conservation easement that allowed it to become Haywood Community College’s newest teaching forest. 

Five working families in Jackson County will have the chance to move into brand new homes once a project currently underway by Mountain Projects reaches its conclusion. 

Cherokee leaders are hoping to establish a lucrative business on a portion of the 300-plus acres of Interstate 40 frontage the tribe purchased in Tennessee earlier this year while also advancing plans for an adventure park on the Qualla Boundary, but first Tribal Council must sign off on the venture. 

The General Election has been over for a week, but in Sylva the results won’t be certain until provisional ballots are counted on Friday, Nov. 15. 

The first time Nancy East visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it was the 1990s and she was in veterinary school. But those squeezed-in backpacking excursions provided the catalyst for her later decision to move to Western North Carolina, and 25 years later, East finished hiking all 850 miles of trail running through the park’s 816 square miles of land. 

It could cost less than originally anticipated to build a new 10,000-square-foot animal shelter facility in Jackson County, according to the most recent architectural estimates. 

After 2018’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, county and school system officials in Jackson County put their heads together to come up with a plan to reduce the chances of such a tragedy someday happening locally. After more than a year of planning and research, the school system is now getting close to implementing the more complex of those safety measures.

In the wake of a June 27 joint resolution from the three Cherokee tribes that declared the native language to be in a state of emergency, this year’s Annual Council sessions in Cherokee revealed language preservation to be a priority for tribal members of all backgrounds and political persuasions. 

Sylva residents gave incumbent commissioners David Nestler and Greg McPherson a vote of confidence by granting them another four years on the town board, but just as in the 2015 race the third of the three seats up for election will be decided by the flip of a coin, according to unofficial results.

High winds ahead of a cold front expected to move in later today have caused the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to close several roads and issue a warning to hikers.

More than a year of planning, collaboration and plain old-fashioned hard work has resulted in a new kids bike park along the Jackson County Greenway, an accomplishment celebrated during a sunlit ribbon-cutting event held at noon Thursday, Oct. 24.

“This park right here, not only is it a tangible, concrete resource for kids immediately and today, but it also stands for, I think, effective and incredibly positive collaboration and partnership between our organization and Jackson County, which I think could materialize into other exciting things,” said Michael Despeaux of the Nantahala Area Southern Off Road Bicycling Association. 

With a new Tribal Council seated and a year of reprieve in place before the election cycle begins again, the body will be considering additional changes to Cherokee’s election ordinance. 

In August, Jackson County commissioners voted unanimously to buy 3.67 acres along Haywood Road in Dillsboro to use as the new site for the area’s recycling drop-off center. But Dillsboro’s town board is now voicing staunch opposition to the move, claiming that the plan would adversely affect the town’s economy and cause problems with traffic and litter. 

With two years elapsed since Sylva passed its first-ever food truck ordinance in July 2017, the town board is circling back to discuss what’s working, what’s not and what could be better. 

After filling the position for nearly a year and a half without the ability to perform law enforcement duties, Greg Wozniak is gone from his position as Pisgah District Ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

Though just barely off the ground, a new hemp testing service launched in Asheville is receiving a markedly positive response from Western North Carolina farmers. 

“We’re definitely feeling pretty busy,” said Amanda Vickers, director of the US Botanical Safety Laboratory. “Our phone has started ringing a lot more since we announced this testing, and a lot of people are really excited to be able to hand deliver their samples. It’s looking like this is really something that there is a demand for.”

Commissioner Mickey Luker’s lack of attendance at county board meetings in recent months has spurred southern Jackson County residents to ask for Luker’s removal from office, with four people addressing commissioners during their Oct. 15 meeting with that request.

After a narrow vote and a delayed ratification, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has a new budget for the 2020 fiscal year.

With early voting already underway and the Nov. 5 election just around the corner, two Sylva residents have declared their intention to run as write-in candidates for a seat on the town commission. 

After being banned since Sept. 26, backcountry campfires are once more allowed in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as of Tuesday, Oct. 22.

If the United States’ outdoor recreation industry were its own country, it would be the world’s 25th largest economy. And, while towns like Moab and Boulder and Jackson Hole might have more name recognition on a nationwide scale, Western North Carolina has everything it takes to command a large piece of that hypothetical country’s pie.

The race for a seat on Sylva’s town board is competitive this year, with six people running for election to one of the three open seats. Two of them are incumbents, one is a former town commissioner and three are seeking elected office for the first time. Serving four-year terms extending through December 2023, the winners will govern during a pivotal time in Sylva’s history.

Legislation creating a Cannabis Commission that would set the stage for hemp production on the Qualla Boundary has been overturned, following a veto from Principal Chief Richard Sneed and a failed attempt from Tribal Council to override that veto. 

The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy has purchased 62 acres at Doll Branch in the Highlands of Roan, an acquisition that adjoins the Cherokee National Forest and is less than half a mile from the Appalachian Trail.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission wants to know about pine snake sightings in North Carolina, found mostly in the southwestern mountain counties, the southern Coastal Plain and the Sandhills.

A 187-acre conservation purchase in Haywood County will allow for wildlife grazing and movement near Interstate 40.

Students in the HIGHTS program, which works with vulnerable youth and their families in Western North Carolina, learn about more than honey when they tend beehives through HIGHTS’ Bee Well program, which believes that bees are good tools for working with youth.

This year Sylva voters will be given a ballot listing six possible names for three open seats on the town’s board of commissioners, but following Danny Allen’s decision to leave the race, only five will belong to viable candidates.

After coming up short in the General Election Sept. 5, principal chief candidate Teresa McCoy filed an election protest Sept. 12 that the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections dismissed in a Sept. 30 decision.

The Jackson County Board of Commissioners has gathered to conduct official business on 14 days since June began, but Commissioner Mickey Luker has been physically absent from these meetings more often than he’s been present. Now, his party would like to see him removed from his seat and replaced with somebody who will fill the chair more often.