It’s 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Southern Porch restaurant in the heart of downtown Canton. Less than 24 hours ago, the mountain community received word that its century-old paper mill would close this summer.  

The expansion of two local businesses in Jackson County, American Sewing Corporation and Innovation Brewing, will lead to the creation of 52 new jobs and over $5 million of investments in the county. 

When Cheryl Hillis started managing vacation rentals in Haywood County 15 years ago, Airbnb didn’t exist, reservations were made with phone calls and mailed checks, and she lived nowhere near Western North Carolina. Hillis was the face of Buffalo Creek Vacations, but she took reservations and managed payments from whichever town her military husband and their four boys lived at the time.

Julie Fox Jones’ family has been in Cullowhee for at least 100 years, probably even longer. Naturally, as a kid growing up here, all she wanted to do was leave. Get out of town. What she didn’t expect was that once she’d made it out, all she would think about was how to get home. 

In an effort to strike a balance between development pressures and a need for growth, the Town of Canton adopted its first major comprehensive plan June 23, and will soon vote to update its subdivision and land development ordinance.

While the instances of personal heroism, professional bravery and private donations are well documented, perhaps the most incredible story to come out of last year’s flooding is reflected in the Town of Canton’s proposed budget — which does not contain a tax increase.

It’s not often, if ever, that I would review a book about “how to succeed in business.” But I’m in the mood and the mode for reviewing books by local authors, and as I said in my last review in these pages our local authors have been hard at it during the pandemic cranking out new volumes of interesting, innovative and important work. 

With more than 600 people and 70 speakers from 24 states gathering for a four-day event, the 2022 Outdoor Economy Conference  held April 4-7 in Cherokee is difficult to sum up in a sentence, a paragraph or even a conversation.

Despite the pandemic, the town of Franklin has seen an influx of new retailers in the last year. 

What started out as a simple idea to open a bottle shop has morphed into a hub of culinary delights and handmade goods in downtown Waynesville.