Engaging North Carolina
Cherokee County
Quick Facts
Students: 38Applicants: 27
Alumni: 128
Park Scholars: 0
Goodnight Scholars: 0
Caldwell Fellows: 0
North Carolina’s westernmost county, Cherokee County has a population of 28,087 with a total employment of 8,066 (28.7%). The county seat is Murphy, which is located 21.6 miles from the Tennessee border and 360 miles from Raleigh. Murphy is closer to six other state’s capitals (Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia) than to North Carolina’s.
The county’s most profitable agricultural product is vegetables/melons/potatoes, while the largest product by acreage is forage land (for grain production). The type of livestock produced most by total number is cattle and calves. The largest manufacturer is Sioux Tools, the county’s sixth-largest employer, which manufactures industrial tools and employs between 250 and 499 people.
NC State is Here
Year-Round Holidays
Some 15% of the nation’s Christmas trees are grown in a 250-mile corridor along the Blue Ridge Parkway, with a significant amount of help from NC State’s College of Natural Resources and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Beginning in Cherokee County and moving north to Ashe County, millions of Christmas trees are planted, monitored and cut for delivery throughout the East Coast.
Research done by geneticists in Raleigh and assistance provided in the field by county extension agents helps those trees grow taller, last longer and smell stronger, prolonging the holiday spirit for families across the country.
Fall noon sun illuminates Fir Heaven's Sake Christmas Tree Farm just outside Topton in Cherokee County. Owners Ricky and Judi Postell got their start with a grant they received with assistance from NC State Extension.
Fir Heaven's Sake Christmas Tree Farm in Cherokee County.
Fir Heaven's Sake Christmas Tree Farm in Cherokee County.
Newly planted sapling awaiting the day it's big enough to be harvetsed at Fir Heaven's Sake Christmas Tree Farm in Cherokee County.
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Pride of the Pack
A Gift of Nature
Percey Bell Ferebee, philanthropist and conservationist, was born on the North Carolina coast but moved to the mountains shortly after he earned his degree at NC State to join the U.S. Forest Service. While at State, Ferebee was a driving force in forming the school’s first varsity basketball team in 1911 and played in both games that season, including the first win in school history, against Wake Forest at Pullen Hall.
He soon turned to banking, using the funds he earned from selling his small community bank to Wachovia Bank and Trust to purchase land in the Great Smoky Mountains.
From his adopted home of Andrews, Ferebee was a devoted public servant, serving on advisory boards from the mountains to the coast. He was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly and served there from 1957 to 1959. Late in life, he donated 6,000 acres of land in the Nantahala Gorge to the U.S. Forest Service, which is now part of the state’s largest national forest. (Read more about Percy Ferebee.)