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  • GSMNP 75th Anniversary

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

75th Anniversary Click Here for Information about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 75th Anniversary.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a world-renowned 800 square mile mountain wilderness that is federally owned and managed by the National Park Service. It protects the largest swatch of upland forest east of the Mississippi. It is surrounded by over 1.6 million acres of U.S. Forest Service National Forest service lands which help provide Great Smoky Mountains visitors with breath-taking views of row-after-row of mountains and ridges stretching to the horizon with only the most scattered evidence of human development – a rare sight in the heavily-populated Eastern U.S.

The Smokies is America’s most visited national park, with over 9 million visitors a year, roughly triple the number that come to Yellowstone or Yosemite National Parks. These visitors are drawn by the sweeping mountain views, 730 miles of pristine mountain streams, carpets of wildflowers and a lush forest that lead to the Park’s recognition as an “International Biosphere Reserve.” It is home to abundant wildlife including black bears, elk, white-tailed deer and 200 species of birds. Visitors are also able to visit almost 80 preserved log cabins, churches, grist mills and historic landscapes that serve as “windows” into the lives of the rugged Scotch-Irish immigrants who settled the mountain in the early 19th century.

The creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park was a drastic departure from the process by which earlier national parks, mostly in the West, were established – by act of Congress from lands already in public ownership. The idea of creating a national park in the Southern Appalachians came from local individuals in the communities surrounding what would become the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Prominent individuals in those communities had visited Western parks and saw how they were protecting some of America’s most beautiful landscapes and disappearing wildlife. They also saw how creation of a national park could bring with it good roads, new jobs and an infusion of tourist spending. Unlike these Western parks all of the land in the East had been in private ownership for generations and would need to be purchased, parcel by parcel. Those local leaders led an effort that resulted in the States of North Carolina and Tennessee to appropriate funding, which was later matched by donations to purchase the 6,600 tracts of private land that had to be acquired to create the Park. No federal money was originally provided to purchase land for the Smokies.

The staff at Great Smoky Mountains National Park was hired to preserve and protect the natural and cultural values of the park as well as to provide the services and facilities – including the roads, trails, visitor centers, and campgrounds that allow visitors to access and enjoy their national park. Information is available on visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park at http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm or by calling (865) 436-1200.

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