Author: Dick Mangrum

The Forest Service is discouraging people from backcountry camping and from bringing food into the Panthertown Valley area of the Nantahala National Forest, following several bear encounters. The area is northeast of Cashiers, North Carolina. If visitors choose to camp in the Panthertown area, they should camp in areas that are used infrequently. Three separate incidents of bear encounters occurred […]

On the agenda for a meeting tonight at Seneca City Hall is a resolution for the Oconee Joint Regional Sewer Authority. The city council will meet for a work session at 6, followed by a special meeting. Last night, during a sewer authority committee meeting, members expressed uncertainty as to any official reaction by their member cities as to the […]

Oconee School District plans to welcome Dr. Mick Zais, state superintendent, during a visit by Zais today to three county schools. The visits are planned this morning at Tamassee-Salem Elementary and Walhalla Middle School. Zais’s final stop will be the Hamilton Career Center, where the school district will treat the state’s education leader to lunch in center’s Considerate Café.

A police chase that began in Walhalla ended minutes later and miles from town in the death of the man being chased. Coroner Karl Addis said Cleve Phillips of Pitts Road, Walhalla died when he lost control of his pickup truck on the gravel portion of Oconee Station Road, struck an embankment and overturned. Phillips was 68 years old. At […]

Governor Nikki Haley today updated what South Carolina is doing to combat the major cyber attack in which someone was able to access files of the Department of Revenue that include Social Security numbers and financial information of more than three and half million state residents. Haley says since Friday and the first public announcement of the cyber attack on […]

The congregants at Walhalla’s St. Luke United Methodist Church heard a message of “Making the Invisible, Visible” as delivered yesterday by Tracy Pender, chair for Native American Ministries. Those who heard Pender’s message included several visitors, such as Nancy Basket, Lori and John Hall of Pickens, and various members of the Cherokee Bear Clan. After lunch, Luther and Marcia Lyle […]

A weekend fight in Oconee County left an Anderson man grimacing in pain and in need of medical help. Three other men were arrested. Sheriff’s officers say they arrested one man at the scene and two others in a car spotted leaving the scene. Deputies were called around 12:45 a-m Sunday to Holder’s Landing Road near S.C. 130, to investigate […]

Besides President and Sheriff and other contests, there’s another reason for Senecans to remember to vote this year. And this applies only to voters living within the city limits. City Attorney Michael Smith says it is a ballot proposition that Seneca leaders have decided to put forth to the voters. The question in front of the Seneca voters reads: “Shall […]

Events are planned to honor Oconee’s approximately eight thousand veterans, as part of next month’s Veterans Day weekend. Purple Heart veterans will be spotlighted during a breakfast, at 8:30 a-m Saturday, November 10 at the Walhalla American Legion Post on N. Church Street. Following that breakfast, according to Veterans Affairs Director Jerry Dyar, a new monument will be unveiled and […]

Practically in the middle of the night, fire broke out in a small vacant block house near Westminster. Chief Chris Smith said fire fighters were unable to put a stop to the fire before it destroyed the house. Owned by Earl Butts, the house destroyed was located on Earl Drive, near W. King Street.