Your poor, poor federal government is broke, and it can’t find any fat in its budget to trim. Therefore, the National Park Service is building a new artifact storage facility in Tennessee. The problem is, artifacts from the Great Smoky Mountains, like arrowheads (or whatever the current PC name for them is), homesteading curios, and public records, are scattered about in facilities that do not meet park standards for environmental control and security. That means mini-museums in Western North Carolina will have to fork over the goods, the tourists, and all their economic multipliers. Swain County residents have organized to oppose the federal haul-off. The federal government is soliciting input at the website with the barebones-budget name: http://parkplanning.nps.gov.
by Leslee Kulba
Wild West blogger