A number of nearby sites are related in one way or the other to the history of the Great Smoky Mountains. Here are a few that you might visit while vacationing in the Smokies:
The arts, crafts, and lifeways of the Cherokees are portrayed by the tribe at the Qualla Reservation, adjacent to the North Carolina side of the park. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian displays a collection of artifacts, and the Oconaluftee Living Indian Village shows typical early Cherokee life in log structures. The play “Unto These Hills” tells the story of the Cherokees and their encounters with Europeans settling in the Smokies and of the forced removal of most of the tribe to Oklahoma in 1838. About 4,000 Cherokees live on the Qualla Reservation today.
The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg has done much to perpetuate the pottery, weaving, and other skills indicative of the Smokies people. The school displays and sells objects created by local artisans.
The Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee, just north of Knoxville, has 30 restored pioneer log structures, a representative farmstead, and more than 200,000 artifacts of mountain life.
The Blue Ridge Parkway, administered by the National Park Service, has several log houses, a gristmill, a reconstructed farm, and other early American buildings. Much of the 755-kilometer (469-mile), parkway, which adjoins Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Oconaluftee and runs north into Virginia, is quite far from the park, but some of the historic points of interest are in the southern portion. The Folk Art Center, at milepost 382, displays traditional crafts of the Southern Highlands.
Armchair Explorations
General histories of the Great Smoky Mountains:
Elizabeth Skaggs Bowman, Land of High Horizons, 1938
Carlos C. Campbell, Birth of a National Park, 1960
Michael Frome, Strangers in High Places, 1980