In addition to a sizable bookstore and information desk, the center offers exhibits on Smoky Mountains history, in particular the Cherokee Indians and the early European settlers and their ancestors. North Carolina: Located just outside Cherokee, the Oconaluftee Visitor Center is the starting point for most visitors entering the park from North Carolina. Enter the park from North Carolina or Tennessee According to local author Gail Palmer, European settlers planted periwinkle on graves to keep away evil spirits. Not all of the burial places in the park are marked, but keep an eye out for periwinkle. This national park contains more than 150 cemeteries from tiny plots with just a few headstones to hundreds. Quiet cemeteries may not be for everyone, but they’re certainly excellent places to relax. But plan ahead: A free lottery determines who gets to ride the shuttle into the park on certain dates to view the night lights.įireflies flash together in bursts in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Combined with all of the other fireflies that reach adulthood at the end of April/beginning of May, it’s a light display to rival Fourth of July fireworks. At least 19 species of fireflies live in Great Smoky Mountains and the males and females of one species synchronize their bioluminescent flashing. Synchronous fireflies light up late spring with their annual stupendous display of nature. But the Wears Valley entrance just south of Townsend is where many locals enter the park. The other Tennessee park gates, especially the one in Gatlinburg, get congested at peak times of year. Wears Valley, just outside the Tennessee side of the park, has pastoral views and its own lesser known park entrance. Spectacular sunrises and uninterrupted nature at LeConte Lodge welcome hikers to the only National Park Service lodging in the park. Built on the site of a tent camp erected in around 1926 to house visiting dignitaries, LeConte Lodge hosts day trippers as well as overnight guests. There is no driving to the summit hiking in is the only way to get there. LeConte Lodge sits close to the summit of Mount LeConte, at 6,360 feet the third highest peak in the park. Hiking Mount LeConte could be the bucket-list item for the Smokies. Here are our favorite points of departure for exploring the park. Great Smoky Mountain National Park has five visitor centers, ideal starting points for your journey. More than 1,500 species of flowering plants, 240 types of birds, and around 50 kinds of fish live there. The Smokies are known for their incredible biodiversity it’s said that moving from the lowest to highest elevations within the park is the biological equivalent of traveling from Georgia to Maine. The shaconage, as the Cherokee people call it, or “place of blue smoke,” is caused by moisture and organic compounds emitted by the dense vegetation, especially on still summer days. Park Service, and a whole lot of work to buy out the loggers and landowners, and to restore the Great Smoky Mountains to their glory.Īs the mountains regrew their 100 native tree species and over 100 native shrub species, the haze that gives the Smokies their name filled the mountain valleys in the early morning. It took the governments of Tennessee and North Carolina, donations from wealthy conservationists, the U.S. Much of the land belonged to 1,200 small property owners. It was 1934 about 80 percent of the forest in the park had been decimated by logging. Visitor Centers: Oconaluftee, Sugarlands, Cades Cove, Clingmans Dome, Gatlinburgīy the time Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited park in the United States, was established it was almost too late to save it.
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