By BROOKLYN BROWN
One Feather Reporter
CHEROKEE, N.C. – Laura Blythe, Cherokee Historical Association (CHA) program director, said there are several renovations and improvements completed and underway for the Oconaluftee Indian Village and Unto These Hills Mountainside Theater.
“We have a ton of new projects on our plate. We’ve worked very closely with Cherokee Preservation Foundation who have helped fund a lot of our upgrades that are taking place. And then we’ve also been able to develop some good relationships with different tribal departments, and we have some really big construction work and new projects coming up on their end as well,” Blythe said.
Light upgrades are shown at the Unto These Hills Mountainside Theater. (Photo contributed)
“One of the main things is the Nvdiyeli Trail has been redone. New signage will be in soon and it’ll be open to the public to travel that path again. They have done beautiful rail work up there.”
Blythe shared that another major renovation was an upgrade to lighting and sound for the theater. “With a grant ask last year from Cherokee Preservation Foundation, we had some money to upgrade lighting and sound for the show and guest experiences. We just put in, with Asheville Lighting and Design Company, all new safety lighting and house lighting for the theater. Stairways, walkways, all of that is lit underneath. The rain shelter has some upgraded lights. Around the rock wall in the lower level has new updated lights. All the pathways on either side. The lights are color-changing, and they dance to music, different things like that, so we’re excited about that. It’s something that’s been needed for guest safety for sure, but just to build upon the aesthetic, too, and that’s now complete. We also have upgraded sound coming in for the show. We had been utilizing some microphones that needed to be replaced for a little while, and so this year the sound quality should be better for the audience to hear. And you won’t miss a beat and lose a mic in the middle of the show.”
She said there has also been sound added at the Village. “We have added a sound system inside the Village. We have a bunch of new programs that we have launched. One is our self-guided tours where typically we’re open mid-April through the end of October for our staff, and now we’re actually doing a self-guided tour with a video recording, signage, some immersive elements, like they can weave a very large vinyl basket mat, and we have a scavenger hunt that takes place for the self-guided tour. So, they can go to a location, answer clues, different things like that, and then they get a prize at the gift shop if they complete the scavenger hunt. With the sound system, we play Cherokee myths and legends, and then we have some ambient noise that makes it feel like there’s people and animals here with us. And then we can make announcements, too, so it’s really a safety thing as well.”
Blythe said there are renovations planned for the Village for fiscal year 2027. “We are getting ready, with support from Cherokee Preservation Foundation, we’re focusing heavily on our 75th anniversary next year for the Village. We’re hoping to upgrade the fencing and some of the cabins inside, some of the buildings, the public facing spaces. And we’re hoping to be able to upgrade some of our employee spaces as well…hopefully we can get that all squared away by April of 2027. We are also working on a commemorative book for the 75th anniversary season, and we are currently working through archives, sifting through thousands upon thousands of pictures and film and footage. We did get an archivist grant, so we’re going to have some assistance. Archivists will be coming in to do an internship and help us separate and digitize some of our old films.”
Blythe added, “We have updated signage along the top underneath the rain shelter with display cases that have old props from the show throughout the years. We’re going to do something similar inside. We’re going to do like a ‘walk through time’ in signage so people can see where the Village was, kind of where it’s at now, and we completed our master plan to do a full campus wide upgrade in October of 2025. And through that, we’re hoping to work with an EBCI department to potentially do a canopy tour. We’re hoping to make a lot more upgrades for the Village, a lot more major upgrades to turn the Mountainside Theater into a world class venue for alternate shows.”
Blythe said another update is the Cherokee Homeland Tour. “We do have a really big program coming out, which we are planning on offering to community members and guests. We worked with Kathi Littlejohn for about a year and a half, going on two years to develop a program that CHA can run called Cherokee Homeland Tours. We have so many significant historical sites, even in our backyard. We drive past them every day to go to work, go home, pick our kids up. We are going to start doing guided tours and take bus groups around or van groups around these locations, that way we can show our community members what’s in their backyard. And then our guests, we want them to actually put their feet down and feel what we feel just living here every day and knowing that this is where we’re from. We have a Qualla Boundary tour, and then we’re going to try to gear some stuff up for the satellite tours with the mounds in Franklin and Hayesville, Robbinsville, Nantahala, western North Carolina and then hopefully we can branch into East Tennessee.”
Blythe and her team are excited for the future of CHA. “These improvements are all really new and they all just launched and we’re scratching the surface, but our mindset in CHA is we have to start growing. We have to start shifting and we’ve wanted to for a very long time. Now we just have the right team that is motivated and ready to move and do something.”
