Readers are now likely to be searching their own minds for the meaning of the term “boomer inn.” Could it be a hotel or boarding house? Maybe the name is associated with the generation of people known as baby boomers following World War II.

A few months after a devastating Pigeon River flood in 2021, some friends of the Canton Area Historical Museum gathered at the flood-ravaged building to study a couple of photographs that had been donated to the museum. One of these was obviously an early panoramic view of Haywood County’s Sunburst logging village that once thrived where the waters of Lake Logan are impounded. However, the other photo required a bit more thought and analysis to finally conclude whence it was taken.   

Having grown up in these Cherokee hills, I became interested in things native from an early age. This interest, spawned by my boyhood friends over on the Snowbird Reservation, has continued throughout my life and until today. 

On June 19, 1865, slaves in Galveston, Texas were told of their freedom — two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia, and over two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed.

A new archival facility, reimagined exhibit space and a website overhaul are all on the horizon for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian as Shana Bushyhead Condill  enters her second year leading the organization.

Jutting off from the left side of a typically busy Blue Ridge Parkway pull-off overlooking Mills River, an unassuming dirt path dips into the woods and winds its way east, just out of view of the famed scenic drive.

I know what you were thinking this morning. 

You were thinking: “With all the recent talk about Women’s History Month, I wonder when someone is going to talk about the History of the Uterus?”

The war in Ukraine may seem a million miles away, but one doesn’t have to travel halfway across the world to find the Western perspective on it. A small group of scholars from Western Carolina University in Cullowhee — some with roots in the war-torn region — are using their experience and academic skillsets to help educate the public about a complicated, confusing conflict that is already beginning to have global implications.

One of the most beautiful settings in Western North Carolina is Lake Logan, a sizable body of water captured between steep-forested mountainsides in southern Haywood County. Champion Fibre Company constructed this reservoir in 1932 on the West Fork of the Pigeon River — a tributary of the Pigeon River. Their primary purpose for doing this was to supplement the flow of water to the pulp and paper mill in Canton, especially during dry periods of low rainfall. 

Valentine’s Day, like so many of the seemingly trivial holidays that dot our calendars, originated thousands of years ago as a Pagan celebration. Over the centuries Lupercalia, a Roman holiday, morphed into the feast day of Saint Valentine and eventually into today’s Hallmark version - Valentine’s Day.