Webster

History

Webster was founded in 1851 in order to serve as the county seat of Jackson County. A massive fire and the railroad's failure to come to the town caused the larger and more powerful railroading center of Sylva to take over the position of county seat. Webster once had a courthouse and many shops, but few of the buildings that hint at its vibrant past as a thriving county seat survive. Several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places are within the town. The Lucius Coleman Hall House, the Elisha Calor Hedden House, the Walter E. Moore House, and the old Webster Rock Schoolhouse, built by the Works Progress Administration in 1936, were all listed in 1990. The Webster Baptist Church, built in 1900, and the Webster Methodist Church, next to the old school and built around the same time, were listed in 1989; the former is across the Tuckasegee River outside the town limits but still considered to be in Webster.

Geography

Webster is located in north-central Jackson County north of the Tuckasegee River. North Carolina Highway 116 runs through the town, leading east to North Carolina Highway 107 and west across the Tuckasegee to U.S. Route 23. NC 107 runs along the eastern edge of Webster, leading north to Sylva and south to Cullowhee. According to the United States Census Bureau, Webster has a total area of , all land.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  5,156
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,046
• Carolina Chickadee

  Poecile carolinensis (Audubon, 1834) · Aves
  4,794
• Carolina Wren

  Thryothorus ludovicianus (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  4,697
• Tufted Titmouse

  Baeolophus bicolor (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  4,668
• Eastern Towhee

  Pipilo erythrophthalmus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,512
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  3,932
• American Goldfinch

  Spinus tristis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  3,649

Most recent

• M 2.65 — 2026-03-24
  10 km SSW of Dillsboro, North Carolina
• M 2.5 — 2025-08-19
  6 km SE of Seymour, Tennessee
• M 2.73 — 2025-08-14
  7 km N of Columbus, North Carolina
• M 2.57 — 2025-07-10
  2 km E of Greenback, Tennessee
• M 4.1 — 2025-05-10
  21 km SE of Greenback, Tennessee
• M 2.51 — 2024-08-05
  4 km SSE of Sevierville, Tennessee