The Blue Ridge Parkway has its southern terminus at the North Carolina entrance to the park. This is Craggy Gardens, near Milepost 364, famous for its Catawba rhododendron displays.
Taken together these surrounding municipalities offer most facilities and services you might need during your stay in the Smokies. Cameras and photographic supplies, groceries, pharmacies, local literature and guides, banks, and countless other services are available.
Cherokee Indian Heritage. The Cherokee Indian Reservation abuts the park boundary on the southeast. In Cherokee there are museums and shops where the art and crafts of these eastern woodlands Indians, thought to be of original Iroquoian stock, are displayed and offered for sale. Each year a play, “Unto These Hills,” is performed locally. It describes the Cherokee’s history and early encounters with Europeans. Most of these activities occur on the North Carolina side of the park.
Mountain Folkways and Crafts. Mountain ingenuity and the human bent for creativity gave rise to crafts characteristic of the southern mountains. These are kept alive in various outlets surrounding the Smokies. In Gatlinburg you can visit the famed Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, which has done so much to revive original handicraft arts and support the artists by marketing their work.
Three main types of basketry are made by Cherokees. Rivercane baskets are now relatively scarce because the once-abundant cane is itself scarce now. White oak baskets are more common. Baskets are also woven from honeysuckle. Above are exquisite examples of basketry by Carol S. Welch, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
The American Museum of Science and Technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratories provides a thoroughly modern contrast to the traditional folkways of the Smokies.