CHEROKEE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — First performed in 1950 and celebrating its 75th anniversary on July 1, 2025, “Unto These Hills” is the story of the Cherokee people in Western North Carolina in the years following the Trail of Tears.
The show runs from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., Monday to Saturday at the Mountainside Theatre, 688 Drama Road. The season began on May 31 and will run until Saturday, August 23. Find tickets here.
“We’re certainly excited about the 75th anniversary and it is quite a milestone, particularly for this region,” said Lance Culpepper, the show’s operations director. “North Carolina actually has a long, rich history of outdoor theatre, and the outdoor theatre movement for the country actually started in North Carolina with native son Paul Green.”
While “Unto These Hills” has its contemporaries, such as “The Lost Colony,” Green’s history of the Roanoke Colony staged at the Outer Banks, and “Horn in the West,” a fellow septuagenarian show about frontiersman Daniel Boone, the show is singular in its subject matter.
“It’s very unique within the outdoor drama community in that it is focused on that native population, who are now the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and is led by a board of enrolled Eastern Band members,” Culpepper explained. “We are looking for ways to continue to grow the organization, maintain its standing within the outdoor theatre community, but also be true to the mission of cultural preservation.”
The production has morphed and changed over the years, but in its latest incarnation, “Unto These Hills” has returned to the original script by Kermit Hunter in its 75th year, though not without a couple alterations.
“We returned to that original script as the base line, but then making those adjustments through not only a 21st century lens, but also just a more culturally introspective lens, removing some of those tropes that were in the script and pop culture of the 50s,” Culpepper said. “You hear more Cherokee language spoken on stage. We’ve been making those fine-tuned adjustments.”
However, Culpepper said, the show has not been sanitized of the harsher, sadder aspects of the history it portrays.
“Sometimes language is so very important, and I think sometimes if you begin to remove some of that language and usage by certain characters, then you lessen that impact on the culture. The words carry weight,” Culpepper said. “Sometimes words are hard to hear and it’s hard to witness when a fellow human is being treated in a certain way.”
As the show examines its own history during its 75th anniversary, it continues to ratify its mission statement.
“It’s a very important mission for us to continue to raise awareness for the public, who simply may know portions of that story. They may have known something about the Trail of Tears, however they may not understand all the promises and treaties that were made by the U.S. government to the Cherokee people that have been broken over time,” Culpepper said.
According to the director, the enduring legacy of “Unto These Hills” comes from its ability to contribute to the public’s cultural consciousness through the power of live performance.
“I think this is, you know, outdoor drama, and history, and preserving history and communicating the impacts of those historical events, is just such an important part of our national dialogue,” Culpepper said.
“We hope to inspire people to do some more research on their own, to learn more about this chapter of history and also to understand that the Cherokee are not a people of the past. It is a growing and thriving culture today.”
For more about “Unto These Hills” and visiting Cherokee, check out www.visitcherokeenc.com.