Jacob, Luke and Ben Sutton were once considered renegade snowboarders at Cataloochee Ski Area.

Phil Francis, the long-time assistant superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, has been appointed superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Nearly two years after Bryson City town leaders agreed to conserve 900 acres once used as the town’s drinking water source, some residents are clamoring to see the tract sold off for development instead.

A new elementary school under construction in Haywood County will serve as an environmental model for developers in the region.

Denver Blaylock sees nothing wrong with his junkyard that straddles U.S. 276 in the Cruso area of Haywood County.

When Ricky Stokely pulled out of Denver Blaylock’s junkyard in Cruso last Friday afternoon towing a junk green Saturn, he didn’t realize just how down to the wire things were.

Advocates of charter schools have launched a statewide campaign to correct what they claim is an inequality in the way lottery money will be doled out for education.

North Carolina legislators passed a lottery this year. The revenue will go toward education, with a large portion designated for school construction and capital outlay. While charter schools are public schools, they won’t get a piece of that school construction money, however.

It appears Dillsboro is getting the short end of the stick in state grant money intended to revitalize business districts that flooded during the hurricanes of 2004 that swept across Western North Carolina.

A small contingent of friends and neighbors showed up on the doorstep of Denver Blaylock’s junkyard in Cruso Saturday (Dec. 10) armed with shovels and donated hemlock trees.

Some Dillsboro merchants have questioned why town leaders based their entire application for flood revitalization money from the state on aiding just one business owner.

When Lisa Ashe signed up for the newly formed Jeff Galloway running group in Jackson County last year, her dream to complete her first marathon in six months was more than a fitness goal or lifetime dream.

The North Carolina Wildlife Commission is still weighing whether to allow the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to bring more elk into the Cataloochee Valley area of the park.

Cherokee business owners are forming a chamber of commerce that will give the business community a voice in shaping the town’s future and strengthen the economic climate.

McGill Associates, a large engineering firm in Asheville, gets the lion’s share of government water and sewer contracts in the region, while smaller, local engineering firms are blocked from competing, according to several local engineers in the region.

Brock Hutchins slid out of the front seat of his four-wheel drive and walked a few yards down a snow-crusted gravel road, casting about with the focus of a shaman leading a hunt. Placing a knuckle between his lips, Hutchins lifted his head and mimicked a bird call as if conjuring life out of the overcast sky.

A North Carolina Birding Trail is under way and could one day could link popular birding sites across the state from the coast to the mountains.

The Haywood tourism industry is on a winning streak.

Elected government leaders in Haywood County have lined up behind a state bill to add Lake Junaluska to Waynesville’s town limits.

A lofty vision to build a 220-foot cross on the mountaintop above Maggie Valley has been downwardly revised to 125 feet, but it could still run afoul of the state ridge law.

The Haywood County Fairgrounds is being eyed as the possible site for a new county animal shelter.

The fairgrounds was identified as a potential site by county leaders unbeknownst to the Haywood County Fair Board, who may have reservations about whether it’s compatible.

A new guard sewed up its takeover of the Haywood County GOP at the party’s annual convention last weekend.

A long-awaited showdown in the internal power struggle for control of the Haywood County Republican Party will play out this Saturday during the party’s annual convention.

A movement to create new wilderness areas in the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests has met resistance in the seven western-most counties.

County commissioners have gone on record in recent months opposing new wilderness areas, claiming it would limit recreation and logging.

The Lake Junaluska community will make a renewed bid to merge with the town of Waynesville this year, this time with the added measure of a formal vote.

Waynesville’s old town hall on Main Street could be converted into a garrison for tourism, business and economic development agencies — a move that would save each of the entities money and promote teamwork.

When Haywood County’s long-time tax collector David Francis was narrowly ousted by a younger, inexperienced opponent in last fall’s election, county commissioners decided to keep Francis around anyway as a mentor for his successor Mike Matthews.

When the sun sets in rural Fines Creek, the little community library gets bumping.

It may be after-hours, but any given evening, a steady stream of cars comes from miles to sit in the parking lot. It’s the newest take on the long-standing tradition of parking, except this love affair is between man and his computer.

The gap between the haves and have nots in the world of high-speed Internet will get a little smaller this spring thanks to a start-up Internet company that will soon be beaming Internet service from towers in Jackson County.

Haywood County commissioners debated this week whether to make volunteers who serve on appointed boards and committees undergo a background check.

When Haywood County gets stiffed on property taxes, it carries a big stick of last resort: the foreclosure.

But since the real estate bust, it’s not been as handy as it once was.

As Paul Carlson tooled out of downtown Franklin, houses faded into rolling hayfields, and the Little Tennessee River soon took up its flank position along the edge of N.C. 28.

Maggie Valley is in limbo over a proposed mountaintop cross after learning last week the state won’t help sort out how high the cross could legally be under the North Carolina ridge law.

The Haywood County School Board followed the recommendation of school cafeteria workers this month and voted to continue buying cleaning chemicals exclusively from a national company, despite promising a local supplier that he would have a chance to bid on the contract for the next school year.

More kids will get a critical early start in education thanks to an expansion of the pre kindergarten program offered on-site at public schools in Haywood County.

Until now, the in-house pre kindergarten program run by the school system has been for low-income children only and funded entirely by government subsidies. But despite the proven importance of kindergarten readiness, there’s not enough state and federal funding to serve all the kids who technically qualify for subsidized pre kindergarten, leading to a perpetual shortage of pre-K slots.

Jack Ewing stepped over a pail of drywall mud, dodged electrical wires dangling from the ceiling and picked his way across construction debris littering the bare concrete floor of the gutted Terrace Hotel room.

A land-use plan to guide growth in Cullowhee will take a detour past the planning board en route to Jackson County commissioners this spring.

There was some uncertainty over what trajectory the land-use plan would take once the Cullowhee planning task force finished it. A unanimous consensus at last week’s commissioner’s meeting was that the planning board should take a crack at it next.

Maggie Valley leaders could land in the middle of a controversy in coming months about whether the owner of Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park should be allowed to build a giant cross on the ridgeline above Maggie Valley.

Call it a foyer, an atrium, a lobby, a cattle call — an addition is being planned for the Jackson County Justice Center to house metal detectors and lines of people waiting to pass through each morning.

Downtown Waynesville could feel the not-so-pleasant trickle-down effects if a proposed smoking ban on Haywood County property goes through.

The county ban would evict smokers from the grounds of the justice center and historic courthouse. Striking out in search of safe harbor, they would no doubt make their way to town sidewalks to light up.

It’s been two weeks since new property values hit the mailboxes in Macon County, but there’s nary a line to be seen at the county property appraisal office.

Only 400 appeals have trickled in so far. The last property revaluation in Macon County saw a whopping 4,000 appeals.

Overbearing language in Haywood County’s emergency management protocols is being revised to make it more palatable to civil liberty watchdogs.

The emergency plan spells out powers the county can evoke in a major crisis — be it a mundane blizzard or extreme terrorist attack, or even a threat from a rogue paramilitary group.

There’s been a new turn in the much-anticipated redevelopment of Ingles’ super market site in Waynesville: Chick-fil-A has joined the party.

Ingles’ site development plans on file with the town of Waynesville have been updated recently to include a Chick-fil-A fronting Russ Avenue. It will occupy the vacant parcel beside Home Trust Bank and roughly across the street from McDonald’s.

Editor's note: The cyberstalking allegations against Monroe Miller were dismissed by a judge following court testimony on March 24, 2015.

Monroe Miller, a watchdog and critic of county government and member of the so-called “patriot faction” of the Haywood County Republican Party, was charged with the misdemeanor of cyberstalking last week.

The charges were taken out by Savannah Tedesco, a 24-year-old woman. She was a volunteer precinct chair in the Haywood GOP but was in the mainstream of the party and not part of Miller’s faction.

Mailboxes across Macon County were blanketed with new property value notices this week, the first countywide appraisal since 2007. 

As you ripped open the envelope, there were probably two things on your mind: 

Richard Lightner isn’t one for nostalgia.

For nearly 30 years, he’s been running the property reval show in Macon County. But there’s not much he misses about the old days.

The time of reckoning is finally here.

Macon County’s first countywide assessment of real estate values since the bust came out this week, and it’s full of surprises. For starters, your property values probably didn’t go down as much as you thought they would.

Some weeks Tommey Allen spends more time behind the wheel than a long-haul trucker.

It’s not all driving time though. Most of it is just idling along the curb, parked on the roadside and sitting in driveways. Over the past two years, Allen and the rest of the Macon County appraisal team have scouted every inch of road — paved, gravel, dirt or otherwise — to size up all 44,000 parcels of property and ultimately make a prognostication of what they’re worth.