If the details work out, Jackson County’s Savannah community could soon have a park to call its own. 

Standing behind the counter of High Country Tire, Summer McMahan is a long way from the bright lights of New York City.

Outside the shop and convenience store, cars zip and zoom by nonstop down U.S. 441, either coming from Dillsboro to the north or Franklin to the south. And though the 22-year-old is busy ringing up purchases or talking up the locals who make a stop to High Country as part of their daily routine, McMahan thoughts keep drifting back to the Big Apple, back to Radio City Music Hall where she recently took the stage to perform on the NBC hit show “America’s Got Talent.”

Some residents of the Yellow Mountain area near Lake Glenville are hoping Jackson County commissioners will step in to address the impacts of a shooting range that’s sprung up in the sparsely populated mountain neighborhood.

The final public hearing in the two-year-old saga of revisions to Jackson County’s steep slope ordinance was all set to take place Sept. 22, but last week county commissioners decided to cancel the hearing and reschedule for a later date. 

John Duncan won’t forget Aug. 19 anytime soon.

“It was damn scary,” he chuckled.

That day not only marked the opening of the Duncan’s Sneak E Squirrel Brewery in Sylva, it also marked the culmination of a dream of his that’s been almost 20 years in the making.

When John Buchanan first took the jail captain job at the Jackson County Detention Center, one assignment quickly rose to the top of his to do list: figure out a better option for inmates’ health care.

It’s been just over a year since the Cashiers ABC store opened its doors, but the store’s renting days are almost over. ABC Board chairman David Noland paid a visit to both the Jackson County and Sylva town commissioners last month, asking for their blessing on an owner-financed purchase deal.

Ideas surrounding the fate of a vacant factory building in Whittier have been swirling since Jackson County commissioners started taking a serious look at its future earlier this year. Turn it into an agriculture center? Make it a recreation park? Deed it to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians? Demolish it?

Two years after the planning board first began reviewing the document, Jackson County has adopted a revised ordinance governing cell tower placement.

Jackson became the first North Carolina county to take landslide mapping into its own hands when the board of commissioners voted unanimously to fund the $143,000 project last week.