Gatlinburg sits on the Western edge of the Smoky Mountains. That means there is a significant change in elevation moving East to West from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park toward Pigeon Forge, Knox County and the rest of the Tennessee Valley. Since an average of 85 inches of rain falls in the high country each year, the elevation and
I interviewed a guy from East Tennessee once whose “thing” was mountain climbing. He wasn’t a particularly rich guy, just a guy who loved the thrill of climbing up high in the tallest mountains in the world. When we spoke, he’d just come home from a successful climb up Everest. He tried to describe to me the pull, the attraction,
I’ve visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park many times, and one of my favorite spots to have a picnic is the Chimneys Picnic Area. It’s in close competition with Metcalf Bottoms. This is partly due to its idyllic setting on the banks of the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River. Over the years, I’ve found that the soothing
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park launched its Park it Forward program on March 1, 2023. The new program is meant to help generate revenue to improve visitor services and address maintenance needs. While the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been historically free to enter, visitation has put a strain on management and upkeep. For example, the park experienced its
There’s a war at work in the high country along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The war began before there was a Tennessee and before there were Carolinas. In fact, the war was waging before European settlers set foot in the Americas. The war began when tectonic plates met and pushed the mountains up out of the subsurface. The victory has
I woke up early on a recent Sunday morning to the familiar rattling of my cell phone.I shook the cobwebs away and reached out, wondering what vastly important fantasy football alert I had just received. Instead, I was met with an image that quickly grabbed my attention. It was a structure fire in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The pictures showed flame
Lightning bugs are just about everywhere in the United States. However, they are usually much more difficult to detect in some areas. According to the Smithsonian, males flash when they’re in flight to attract females among the Eastern species. However, out West, it’s the females that glow. However, the females glow more faintly and on the ground. What months are
The year was 1989. At the time, I was an eighth-grader at Bachelor Middle School in Bloomington, Indiana. It was my first year at the school. We’d moved to Bloomington that year from a much smaller Indiana town, but I made friends fairly easily. We moved a lot when I was a kid. Bloomington is a college town, a little
Cades Cove is a national treasure that is rich in history, a jewel of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But Rex Caughron doesn’t bother much with going anymore. “Very seldom do I go through the Cove,” he said. “It don’t look like Cades Cove to me.” In another life, Cades Cove – or at least a hefty piece of
It’s not often we get a glimpse into the road not taken. There was a movement in the early 1900s to preserve the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains and create the national park. But that movement came with consequences. Whether those consequences were good or bad depends on your point of view. Ultimately, people lost their homes, their land