Jackson County is shaped by the unique identities of its several towns and small communities, each with its own rich history.

Cashiers

Located at 3,486 feet above sea level, Cashiers is said to be named for a lost horse — an acknowledgement of the area’s dense forests, replete with laurel and rhododendron thickets. The town was hailed as a cool respite from the hot, humid shipping towns further south for mid-nineteenth century aristocrats.

One such aristocratic family was the Hamptons. Wade Hampton III was the best-known member of the family due to his service as a general in the Confederate Army and active political career. In 1890, Dr. William S. Halstead, who married into the Hampton family, bought the Hampton home, renaming it High Hampton after his ancestral home High Halstead in England. The High Hampton Country Club later was constructed on the same property.
Now, Cashiers is home to several similar resorts and golf courses but also boasts great opportunities for outdoor recreation such as hiking and mountain climbing.

Also of note are some of the smaller communities one passes traveling south on N.C. 107 from the county seat of Sylva to Cashiers such as East LaPorte. Located alongside the Tuckasegee River past Cullowhee, East LaPorte was once the site of an Indian trading post established by the French Huguenots as the eastern entrance to Indian territory. In French, East LaPorte means “eastern door.”


Cullowhee

Cullowhee, which means “white lily” in Cherokee, is an unincorporated township comprised mostly of Western Carolina University and the surrounding businesses and residences designed to service faculty and student needs.

Professor Robert Lee Madison founded Western Carolina University — originally chartered as Cullowhee High School — in August of 1889. Beginning about 1912, the status of the school was gradually raised. The university went through several name changes as its course offerings increased and it wasn’t until 1967, when the school was designated a regional university by the North Carolina General Assembly, that the name Western Carolina University was finally settled upon.

Near Cullowhee is the Forest Hills township, named for the 1878-1880 postmaster’s home, Forest Hill. Today, the township is home to a number of university faculty members.


Dillsboro

Today a village of shops, crafters and family restaurants, Dillsboro has always been a center of railway activity. During the 1880s when the Western North Carolina Railroad was built, the village bore a variety of names — Depot, New Webster, or Webster Station. In 1882, the Tunnel Post Office (named for the railroad’s Cowee Tunnel) was established with William Allen Dills as postmaster. It was the railroad’s developer, A.B. Andrews — for whom the town of Andrews in Cherokee County is named — who suggested the town adopt the name of its postmaster, becoming Dillsboro. Dills was responsible for building the Riverwood Shops, which overlook the Tuckasegee River, and what later became known as the C.J. Harris House. Harris is the namesake of Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.

Dills’ own home stood next to the Mt. Beulah Hotel — constructed in 1884 and today known as the Jarrett House. By 1888, Dillsboro had become the most important town along the railroad in terms of industry, with two sawmills, two clay mines, two livery stables, six general stores, a shoemaker and several wood yards.


Glenville

The Glenville community is centered on a large man-made lake with 26 miles of shoreline at 3,500 feet above sea level. The lake is the highest of its size east of the Mississippi River and is a favorite place for aquatic recreation.
The area originally was known as the Hamburg Township, settled in 1827.

In the late 1880s the area was thriving with industries including forestry, tanning and mining. It was in 1891 that the area was renamed Glenville. The lake itself was not created until 1940-41, when Nantahala Power and Light Company?— owned by ALCOA — constructed a dam on the Tuckasegee River. The hydroelectric dam provided more electricity to help make aluminum for the war effort. The creation of the lake flooded Glenville’s schools, homes, businesses and farmlands. Today, the community is settled along the shores with several second and vacation homes, boating businesses and small shops.


Sylva

Sylva is Jackson County’s retail and professional center where day-to-day services meet unique history. The town’s development rose with the construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad in the 1880s. Its name came about at the suggestion of Mae Hampton, daughter of E.R. Hampton, who is credited as being the founder of Sylva. E.R. Hampton had married into the Cannon family, which owned a sawmill where William D. Sylva, an itinerant Dane, had helped saw the logs that built the Hampton’s home.

The railroad’s route through Sylva made it a prime location for the county seat — originally located in Webster — but the issue of relocation resulted in years of bitter dispute between the two town’s representatives. The state legislature settled the dispute, giving Sylva permission to construct a courthouse so long as the town paid the moving costs to relocate. On Feb. 28, 1914, the new Sylva courthouse, located on a hill overlooking Main Street, opened. Construction costs totaled $30,000. Today, the courthouse is reputed to be the most photographed in the country.


Webster

The town of Webster is a quiet residential community situated on top of a hill overlooking the Tuckasegee River. The town was created in the mid-1800s with the purchase of an 18-acre tract specifically designated to become the county seat. Within a few years of its settlement, a courthouse was erected. The town was incorporated in 1859, but over the next 20 years the town government became inactive — the first of several rises and falls in the town’s municipal development, and perhaps an early indicator of the town’s future. The story goes that during the construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad, county residents fully expected the railroad to run through Webster. However, the county’s state government representative — said to be fond of his drink — was taken aside at a crucial moment in the voting process and plied with liquor by an individual desiring a more direct route from Sylva to Dillsboro. The location of the railroad later was a primary factor in the movement to relocate the county seat from Webster to Sylva.


Whittier

Whittier, Jackson County’s closest community to Cherokee, was another railroad town. Upon calling the area’s residents together, Clark Whittier proposed the formal establishment of a town: “It is my wish and I so move that we start operations here upon the principals and Word of God, including all morality, especially temperance and prohibition of the strongest form.”

The town was incorporated in 1907 and by 1913 boasted a dry store, hotel, physician and surgeon, plus sawmills, lumber yards, three churches and a school. However, with the Great Depression the town lost much of its industry as the demand for lumber declined. By 1993 Whittier’s charter was repealed and today the community is mostly residential.

(Historical information collected from The History of Jackson County, a publication of the Jackson County Historical Association.)