Plateau Picks

THE PERFECT PERK WINTER RESTORATION The cold-weather months can take a toll on your mental

Once again winter is upon us, and there is nothing health, so it’s important to carve out time for yourself. better to combat its effects than a nice, hot cup of coffee. Aveeno uses the power of nature’s most restorative

Capresso defines the ultimate in home coffee. ingredients, giving you products that nurture and care for Espresso Maker | $172.95 your skin, so you can care for what’s most important in life.

Cool Grind Bean Grinder | $39.99

Cashiers Kitchen Co. | Cashiers Assorted Pricing

a few of our favorite findsPicks Plateau

Laughter is the purest form of joy! And there’s no better time to share a laugh (or two) than in 2021. These greeting cards will have the giggles spreading like … (do we need to say it?)

Assorted Pricing

Noted for its unusual shapes and vibrant colors, artist Prentice Hicks’ glass is formed with traditional glassblowing tools and techniques – he then creates loose and fluid characteristics that he believes reflect the properties of the glass itself. The resulting glassware is, in his words, “easy to hold, attractive to use and friendly to the touch”

Hand-blown wine glass | $69 Peak Experience | Highlands

With colors inspired by a handful of fresh blueberries, this hand-dyed and handwoven twist shawl/ shrug is created with soft cotton yarns, an infinity twist in front and flattering point at back. Blueberry Twist Shawl | $195 deborahbryanthandwoven.com | Cashiers

Split into 16 -18” lengths - with up to 24” available - Kiln Dried Firewood ignites easily, burns hot and efficiently - and - it leaves very little ash or soot in your fireplace. Highlands Lawn & Garden | Highlands

Robert Tino is revered for his artistic interpetations of the landscapes found throughout the Great Smoky Mountains. His signature meshing of colors evokes the countless moods of this mountain eden.

Original Robert Tino Painting | $1,895 Nearly New | Cashiers

WEST END 1. On The Verandah Restaurant 2. Highlands Smokehouse 4. The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts 5 The Dave Drake Ceramic Barn at The Bascom

SOUTH END 13. 4118 Kitchen & Bar 15. Dauntless Printing 26. Lupoli Construction 27. Pat Allen Realty Group 31. The Laurel 35. ACP Home Interiors 36. The Summer House Bed & Bath 37. The Summer House 44. Blue Elephant Consignment Studio 45. Head Innovations 46. Cake Bar & Chocolate Heaven

MAIN STREET 103. Highlands Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center 123. The Park on Main Hotel 124. Landmark Realty Group 142. Main Street Gifts 136. Dutchmans 152. Highlands Sotheby’s International Realty 160. TJ Bailey’s for Men 169. Country Club Properties 178. McCulley’s II 179. SweeTreats Highlands Deli 189. Smitten 190. Wolfgang’s Restaurant & Wine Bistro 191. Berkshire Hathaway Homes Services Meadows Mountain Realty 194. Old Edwards Inn 195. Madison’s Restaurant 196. The Wine Garden 197. Four65 Woodfire Bistro + Bar 202. Country Club Properties 202. Rent in Highlands - CCP Vacation Rentals 206. The Business Spot 207. Creative Concepts Salon

WRIGHT SQUARE on MAIN (Factoid: Named after Whiteside hero) 113. Edward Jones 117. Country Club Properties ON THE HILL 310. McCulley’s 312. The Ugly Dog Public House 313. Old Edwards Inn 318. Peggy Crosby Center: - The Kitchen Carry Away & Catering SPRING VILLAGE 403. Warth Construction

VILLAGE PARK 613. John Cleaveland Realty 615. Shakespeare & Co. Books 616. Fressers Courtyard Cafe

CAROLINA VILLAGE 704. Creekside Village: - Bridge at Mill Creek - Cake Bar 707. Yoga Highlands 709. The High Dive 709. Don Leon’s 710. Meritage Bistro 711. Chambers Realty & Vacation Rentals NORTH END 813. Martin-Lipscomb Performing Arts Center

OUT NC 106 ➡ Peak Experience ➡ Fire + Water ➡ The Vineyard at 37 High Holly ➡ Highlands Aerial Park ➡ Scaly Mountain Outdoor Center ➡ Pat Calderone Gallery OUT 64 EAST ➡ Black Rock Granite ➡ Berkshire Hathaway Homes Services Meadows Mountain Realty ➡ WHLC ➡ Skyline Lodge/ Oak Steakhouse ➡ Highlands Rock Yard ➡ Center for Plastic Surgery ➡ Cullasaja Club ➡ Roman’s Roofing ➡ Pat Allen Realty Group

For a complete listing please visit our website, thelaurelmagazine.com. Being added to our listing is easy! Simply advertise with The Laurel.

SLABTOWN 6. Slab Town Pizza 8. Remax Summit Properties

NORTH 107 16. Stork’s - Wrap. Pack. Ship

THE SHOPS AT CASHIERS COMMONS 28. Cashiers Kitchen Co. 29. The Business Spot 30. Bombshell Hair Boutique 33. Zoller Hardware

AT THE CROSSROADS 37. Landmark Realty Group

CHESTNUT SQUARE 43. A Jones Company 47. Lehotsky & Sons, Builders 55. Cashiers Valley Fusion

EAST 64 64. Alexander Gardens: - Victoria’s Closet - Victoria’s Closet Shoes & Purses - Vic’s for Men 75. Carolina Rustic Furniture 76. Blue Ridge Bedding 79. Jennings Builders Supply

VILLAGE WALK 80. A-List Antiques 80. Josephine’s Emporium 89. Nearly New Furniture Consignment 99. Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Meadows Mountain Realty

SOUTH 107 102. TJ Bailey’s for Men 103. Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming 108. Landmark Realty Group 109. Ugly Dog Public House 110. McCulley’s 127. Laura Moser Art 127. Merrell Thompson Photography 128. Mountainworks Custom Home Design LTD. 136. McKee Properties 137. Bounds Cave Rug Gallery

THE VILLAGE GREEN 142. Village Green Commons 143. The Village Green WEST 64 154. Cashiers Smokehouse 155. Cashiers Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Center 156. Creekside: - Silver Creek Real Estate Group 158. The Business Spot 173. Betsy Paul Properties 175. Srebalus Construction 176. Lenz Gifts

DOWN 107 SOUTH ➡ Silver Run Reserve

VISIT LAKE TOXAWAY ➡ The Greystone Inn

VISIT SAPPHIRE: ➡ Black Bear Lodge ➡ Sapphire Valley Real Estate

VISIT SYLVA: ➡ Imperial Security

For a complete listing please visit our website, thelaurelmagazine.com.

Being added to our listing is easy! Simply advertise with The Laurel.

photo by Susan Renfro

It’s time to pay tribute to Old Man Winter with a Highlands Ice Review, guest stars: the Ice Age, ice cream, and ice skating.

Approximately 40-50,000 years ago, Mother Earth seas’d up, as it were. The polar caps and surrounding oceans froze enough water to lower the sea level hundreds of feet. Florida was a blob and Long Island was no longer an island … just a whole buncha beach. So much land was exposed there was a bridge, 1,000 miles wide connecting Asia to North America. Asian pioneers moved into our upper west coast and their offspring spread across the continent. No talk of a wall then.

Eons later, their Paleo-Indian descendants followed herds of big game. They made it to the Carolina region c. 8.000 BCE, possibly earlier. That was the Appalachians’ first human encounter.

Fast-forward to the 1880s when our second ice encounter, ice cream, that scrumptious, melty, sweet confection, made the scene. Ice cream played an important role (it was a sher-bet) in Highlands Academy School’s expansion.

In the school’s first year, kids were already cramped. This was the year of the deep snow … about three feet of it.

Snow covered the ground for a month. Locals cut ice blocks from the lake, layered them in sawdust, and stored them in a barn. Hard to believe, but they lasted ‘til summer when the ice was used to freeze churned cream. Students sold enough ice cream to purchase lumber for a school house addition.

The third ice-capade was ice-skating. A foot of snow in January of 1940 set the weather-stage for freezing Lake Sequoyah by early February. A 15-inch sheet of ice topped the lake. The ice was so thick cars drove on it. Hundreds of skaters figureeighted themselves silly.

In January of 1957 a frozen Mirror Lake attracted several thousand visitors, mostly

South Carolinians. Ice skating was a boon to the town, stuffing local merchants’ pockets with welcome revenue in an otherwise slow season.

Here’s hoping this article, written in November, will predict some Ice Ice, Baby for those who long to take a spin around the lake. You can always visit Highlands Ice Skating Rink if Old Man Winter is slumming it this season: (828) 526-3556.

To learn more about Highlands winter wonderland, refer to Ran Shaffner’s Heart of the Blue Ridge or go to highlandshistory.com or email hhs@ highlandshistory.com. by Donna Rhodes

One by one, the little frame schoolhouses in Cashiers Township, some used since the 1840s, were coming to an end. There was going to be a brand new school in Cashiers built on N.C. Highway 106. We now know this section of that highway to be named simply, the “Cashiers School Road.” It has become a state road since the construction of N. C Highway 107. The smaller wooden frame Cashiers School built in 1912 with its original school bell, was at this time to be abandoned. It’s still standing today, on the east side of the road we now know as the Cashiers School Road. Its entrance has been changed to face Highway 107.

The brand new school built of brick is also still standing on the west side of the road, and is currently used as a private pre-school. Built in 1938, the new Cashiers School had three classrooms and an auditorium. There was a separate building within about 200 yards that was used as the “cafeteria.” There was no modern plumbing even in this new school, so outhouses may have been provided, otherwise the woods out back were divided into the boys’ neck-of-the-woods and girls’ neck-of-the-woods. With the building of this new elementary school, the remaining one-room schoolhouses in Cashiers, Whiteside Cove and Pleasant Grove, were to be closed down.

Just prior to the construction of the new consolidated elementary school in 1938 in Cashiers, there were three teachers in Cashiers, according to the 1930 census. They were Arthur C. Rogers, aged 19, who was a son of Christopher G. and Lena Rogers. In 1930, Edith Passmore, 24, the wife of John C. Passmore, was teaching in the village of Cashiers, and Martha Elizabeth “Madge” Dillard, 22, a daughter of Thomas A. and Susan Dillard, was teaching at the Pleasant Grove School. Madge later married Merritt Merrell.

The 1938 Cashiers School was renovated in 1950 to add plumbing for indoor restrooms, an updated electrical system, a new heating system, a library and an office. The school continued its sessions for 37 years until the Blue Ridge School was built in 1975, consolidating Cashiers and Glenville students in grades one through twelve.

To learn more, visit GlenvilleCashiersHistory.com

by Carol M. Bryson, Author and Historian