Sylva: The Town That Climbed the Hill for Power
North Carolina
Sylva was incorporated in eighteen eighty-nine as a railroad town on the Tuckasegee River. For the first two decades of its existence it was the largest non-county-seat town west of Asheville, while the actual county seat of Jackson County sat in nearby Webster. Sylva's residents spent years lobbying the legislature to move the seat of government to where the railroad and industry had already concentrated.
In nineteen oh one they petitioned formally. A local industrialist named C.J.
Harris offered to pay thirty thousand dollars to build a new courthouse. A county vote followed. Webster lost.
The courthouse went up on the hill above Main Street in nineteen fourteen, and Sylva has been the county seat ever since. Today the town is the gateway community for the Great Smoky Mountains and Western Carolina University.
