Webster: The County Seat That Got Left Behind

When Jackson County was carved from Macon and Haywood counties in eighteen fifty-one, Webster became its seat of government. An eighteen-acre tract was purchased from Nathan Allen for one hundred dollars and the town was platted. For sixty years it served as the political and legal center of this mountain county.

Then the railroad came to Sylva, the next valley over, and everything changed. Sylva's merchants grew wealthy on rail commerce. In nineteen thirteen, after a bitter fight, Jackson County's voters approved moving the courthouse to Sylva. The new courthouse built in Sylva cost about thirty thousand dollars. Webster lost its county seat and the traffic that came with it. It remained a small, quiet community, while Sylva became the commercial hub. Webster still has a post office, a handful of historic buildings, and the particular stillness of a place where history peaked and then moved on.