Many of the facilities serving Jackson County students were built for another generation. The Smoky Mountain High School campus and the building now used as the school district’s central office were built in 1960. At Smoky Mountain High School, the main campus dates to 1960, when it opened as Sylva-Webster High School. A middle school would give them a shared school community where they could study, compete, perform and socialize together. Jackson County officials have described the county’s existing property tax rate as the second-lowest among North Carolina’s 100 counties.