History of Bryson City, North Carolina
Native Americans have been living and hunting in the vicinity of what is now Bryson City for nearly 14,000 years. The village of Kituhwa, which the Cherokee believed to be their oldest village, was located along the Tuckasegee immediately upstream from Bryson City.
Around 1818, a Cherokee chief known as Big Bear received a 640-acre reservation of land immediately west of the confluence of Deep Creek and the Tuckasegee River, which included most of what is now Bryson City. Big Bear sold part of his reservation to Darling Belk in 1819 and another part to John B. Love in 1824. Throughout the 1830’s, Belk's heirs and Love fought an extended legal battle over control of the Big Bear reservation, with Love finally prevailing in 1840. The following year, Love sold part of the land to James and Diana Shular. The Shulars, in turn, sold off parts of their land to Colonel Thaddeus Bryson and merchant Alfred Cline. A small hamlet known as Bear Springs developed amidst what was once Big Bear's reservation.
Swain County was formed from parts of Jackson County and Macon County in 1871, and the new commissioners first met at Cline's store (now operated by Cline's widow, Lucy Ann) at Bear Springs. Lucy Ann Cline agreed to sell several lots of her land for the formation of a county seat for the new county. The county seat, initially known as Charleston, was laid out in a T-shape formed by what is now Main Street and Everett Street (the latter street was named for the county's first sheriff, Epp Everett). The first Swain County Courthouse was completed in 1874.
In 1889, the people of Charleston changed the city's name to "Bryson City" to acknowledge the many services rendered to the city by Thaddeus Bryson and to eliminate the confusion brought about by sharing a name with Charleston, South Carolina. The Western North Carolina Railroad laid tracks through Bryson City in 1884, greatly easing transportation to the previously-remote area. Bryson City was incorporated in 1887.
The Bryson City Bank opened in 1904 and the current Swain County Courthouse was completed in 1908.