Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s History, Culture, Flora & Fauna!

The park was chartered by the United States Congress in 1934, and officially dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. The Great Smoky Mountains was the first national park having land and other costs paid in part with federal funds; previous parks were funded wholly with state money or private funds. The park was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, and an International Biosphere Reserve in 1988.

As the most visited national park in the United States, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park anchors a large tourism industry based in Sevier County, Tennessee adjacent to the park. Major attractions includeing Dollywood, the second-most visited tourist attraction in Tennessee, Gatlinburg, and Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies. Tourism to the park contributes an estimated $2.5 billion annually into the local economy.

The National Park:

Wilson B. Townsend, the head of Little River Lumber, began advertising Elkmont as a tourist destination in 1909. Within a few years, the Woodland Hotel and the Appalachian Club had been established to cater to elite Knoxvillians seeking summer mountain getaways. In the early 1920s, several Appalachian Club members, among them Knoxville businessman Colonel David Chapman, began seriously considering a movement to establish a national park in the Great Smokies. As head of the Great Smoky Mountains Park Commission, Chapman was largely responsible for raising funds for land purchases and coordinating park efforts between local, state, and federal entities.

The creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park proved much more complex than the creation of its predecessors, such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, which were already federally owned. Along with convincing logging firms to sell lucrative lumber rights, the Park Commission had to negotiate the purchase of thousands of small farms and remove entire communities. The commission also had to deal with the Tennessee and North Carolina legislatures, which at times were opposed to spending taxpayer money on park efforts. In spite of these difficulties, the Park Commission had completed most major land purchases by 1932. The national park officially opened in 1934, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt presiding over the opening ceremony at Newfound Gap.

Indigenous Peoples:

For thousands of years, this region was occupied by successive cultures of indigenous peoples. The historical Cherokee had their homeland here, and occupied numerous towns in the river valleys on both sides of the Appalachian Mountains. Their first encounters with Europeans were as traders, mostly coming from the colonial Carolinas and Virginia. European Americans did not begin to settle here until the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Particularly because of their pressure to acquire land in the Deep South, in 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indain Removal Act, beginning the process that eventually resulted in the forced removal of all Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

Most of the Cherokee were also removed, for a period some, led by such warriors as Tsali, evaded removal by staying in the area now part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A band on the Oconaluftee River acquired land and also remained. Their descendants make up most of the federally recognized Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, based in North Carolina, and their Qualla Boundary reserve to the south of the park.

When pioneers came to the area, they learned that the Cherokee called the mountains Shaconage, which translates to the ?place of the blue smoke.? The Cherokee actually believed the mountains were a sacred place.

The name “Smoky” comes from the natural fog that often hangs over the range and presents as large smoke plumes from a distance. This fog is caused by the vegetation emitting VOC or volatile organic compounds, chemicals that have a high vapor pressure and easily form vapors at normal temperature and pressure.

The Cherokee:

By the time the first English explorers arrived in Southern Appalachia in the late 17th century, the Cherokee controlled much of the region, and the Great Smoky Mountains lay at the center of their territory. One Cherokee legend tells of a magical lake hidden deep within the range, but inaccessible to humans. Another tells of a captured Shawnee medicine man named Aganunitsi who, in exchange for his freedom, travels to the remote sections of the range in search of the Uktena. The Cherokee called Gregory Bald Tsitsuyi ???, or “rabbit place,” and believed the mountain to be the domain of the Great Rabbit. Other Cherokee place names in the Smokies included Duniskwalgunyi ??????, or “forked antlers”, which referred to the Chimney Tops, and kuwahi ???, or “mulberry place”, which referred to Clingmans Dome.

Most Cherokee settlements were located in the river valleys on the outer fringe of the Great Smokies range. The Smokies, along with the Unicois, provided the main bulwark dividing the Overhill Cherokee villages in modern Tennessee from the Cherokee Middle towns in modern North Carolina. The Overhill town of Chilhowee was situated at the confluence of Abrams Creek and the Little Tennessee, and the Overhill town of Tallassee was located just a few miles upstream near modern Calderwood, both village sites are now under Chilhowee Lake. A string of Overhill villages, including Chota and Tanasi, dotted the Little Tennessee valley north of Chilhowee.

The Cherokee Middle towns included the village of Kittowa, which the Cherokee believed to be their oldest village along the Tuckasegee River near Bryson City. The village of Oconaluftee, which was situated along the Oconaluftee River near the modern Oconaluftee Visitor Center, was the only known permanent Cherokee village located within the national park’s boundaries. Sporadic or seasonal settlements were located in Cades Cove and the Hazel Creek valley.

Heavy logging in the late 19th century and early 20th century devastated much of the forests of the Smokies, but the National Park Service estimates 187,000 acres of old growth forest remains, comprising the largest old growth stand in the Eastern United States. Most of the forest is a mature second-growth hardwood forest. The range’s 1,600 species of flowering plants include over 100 species of native trees and 100 species of native shrubs. The Great Smokies are also home to over 450 species of non-vascular plants, and 2,000 species of fungi.

The forests of the Smokies are typically divided into three zones, The cove hardwood
forests in the stream valleys, coves, and lower mountain slopes, the northern hardwood forests on the higher mountain slopes and the spruce-fir or boreal forest at the very highest elevations.

Appalachian balds patches of land where trees are unexpectedly absent or sparse?are interspersed through the mid-to-upper elevations in the range. Balds include grassy balds, which are highland meadows covered primarily by thick grasses, and heath balds, which are dense thickets of rhododendron and mountain laurel typically occurring on narrow ridges. Mixed oak-pine forests are found on dry ridges, especially on the south- facing North Carolina side of the range. Stands dominated by the Eastern hemlock, ?Tsuga canadensis? are occasionally found along streams and broad slopes above 3,500 feet.

Cove hardwood forests, which are native to Southern Appalachia, are among the most diverse forest types in North America. The cove hardwood forests of the Smokies are mostly second-growth, although some 72,000 acres are still old-growth. The Albright Grove along the Maddron Bald, between Gatlinburg and Cosby is an accessible old growth forests with some of the oldest and tallest trees in the entire range.

Over 130 species of trees are found among the canopies of the cove hardwood forests in the Smokies. The dominant species include yellow birch, basswood, yellow buckeye, tulip tree commonly called “tulip poplar, silverbells, sugar maple, cucumber magnolia, shagbark hickory, Carolina hemlock and eastern hemlock. The American chestnut, which was arguably the most beloved tree of the range’s pre-park inhabitants, was killed off by the introduced Chestnut blight in the 1920s.

The understories of the cove hardwood forest contain dozens of species of shrubs and vines. Dominant species in the Smokies include the Eastern redbud, flowering dogwood, Catawba rhododendron, mountain laurel, and smooth hydrangea.

Northern hardwood forests:

Annual temperatures in the higher elevations in the Smokies are cool enough to support forest types more commonly found in the northern United States. The northern hardwood forests of the Smokies constitute the highest broad leaf forest in the eastern United States. About 28,600 acres of the northern hardwood forest are old-growth.

In the Smokies, the northern hardwood canopies are dominated by yellow birch and American beech, White basswood, mountain maple and striped maple, yellow buckeye are present. The northern hardwood understory is home to diverse species such as coneflower, skunk goldenrod, Rugel’s ragwort, bloodroot, hydrangea, and several species of grasses and ferns.

One unique community in the northern hardwoods of the Smokies is the beech gap, or beech orchard. Beech gaps consist of high mountain gaps that have been monopolized by beech trees. The beech trees are often twisted and contorted by the high winds that occur in these gaps. Why other tree types such as the red spruce fail to encroach into the beech gaps is unknown.

Spruce-fir forest:

The spruce-fir forest, also called the “boreal” or “Canadian” forest?is a relict of the ice age, when mean annual temperatures in the Smokies were too cold to support a hardwood forest. While the rise in temperatures between 12,500 and 6,000 years ago allowed the hardwoods to return, the spruce-fir forest has managed to survive on the harsh mountain tops, typically above 5,500 feet. About 10,600 acres of the spruce-fir forest are old- growth.

The spruce-fir forest consists primarily of two conifer species, red spruce and Fraser fir. The Fraser Firs, which are native to Southern Appalachia, once dominated elevations above 6,200 feet in the Great Smokies. Most of these firs were killed, however, by an infestation of the balsam woolly adelgid, which arrived in the Smokies in the early 1960s. Thus, red spruce is now the dominant species in the range’s spruce-fir forest. Large stands of dead Fraser Firs remain atop Clingmans Dome and on the northwestern slopes of Old Black. While much of the red spruce stands in the Smokies were logged during World War 1, the tree is still common throughout the range above 5,500 feet. Some of the red spruce trees in the Smokies are believed to be 300 years old, and the tallest rise to over 100 feet.

The main difference between the spruce-fir forests of Southern Appalachia and the spruce-fir forests in northern latitudes is the dense broad-leaved understory of the former. The spruce-fir understories of the Smokies are home to catawba rhododendron, mountain ash, pin cherry, thornless blackberry, and hobblebush. The herbaceous and litter layers of the spruce- fir forests are poorly lit year-round, and are thus dominated by shade- tolerant plants such as ferns, namely mountain wood fern and northern lady fern, and over 280 species of mosses.

Wildflowers:

Many wildflowers grow in mountains and valleys of the Great Smokies, including bee balm, Solomon?s seal, Dutchman?s breeches, various trilliums, the Dragon’s Advocate and even hardy orchids. There are two native species of rhododendron in the area. The Catawba rhododendron has purple flowers in May and June, while the rosebay rhododendron has longer leaves and blooms white or a light pink in June and July.

The orange, to sometimes red- flowered and deciduous flame azalea closely follows along with the Catawba. The closely related mountain laurel blooms in between the two, and all of the blooms progress from lower to higher elevations. The reverse is true in autumn, when nearly bare mountaintops covered in rime ice, frozen fog can be separated from green valleys by very bright and varied leaf colors. The rhododendrons are broadleafs, whose leaves droop in order to shed wet and heavy snows that come through the region during winter.

The Great Smoky Mountains are home to 66 species of mammals, over 240 species of birds, 43 species of amphibians, 60 species of fish, and 40 species of reptiles. The range has the densest black bear population east of the Mississippi River. The black bear has come to symbolize wildlife in the Smokies, and the animal frequently appears on the covers of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s literature. Most of the range’s adult eastern black bears weigh between 100 pounds to 300 pounds, although some grow to more than 500 pounds.

The elk are part of a herd which was transplanted to Cataloochee in 2001, in an attempt to reintroduce the species to the Appalachians in North Carolina, other mammals in the Great Smokies include the white tailed deer, the population of which drastically expanded with the creation of the national park. The bobcat is the range’s only remaining wild cat species, although sightings of cougars, which once thrived in the area, are still reported. The coyote is not believed to be native to the range, but has moved into the area in recent years and is treated as a native species. Wolf packs do not roam this region due to extirpation. They modernly reside in Alaska, portions of the Great Lakes region, all northwestern American states and Canada. Two species of fox, red fox and the gray fox are found within the Smokies, with red foxes being
documented at all elevations.

European boar, introduced as game animals in the early 20th century, thrive in Southern Appalachia but are considered a nuisance due to their tendency to root up and destroy plants. The boars are seen as taking food resources away from bears as well, and the park service has sponsored a program that pays individuals to hunt and kill boars and leave their bodies in locations frequented by bears. The Smokies are home to over two dozen species of rodents, including the endangered northern flying squirrel, and 10 species of bats, including the endangered Indiana bat. The National Park Service has successfully reintroduced river otters and elk into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. An attempt to reintroduce the red wolf in the early 1990s ultimately failed. These wolves were removed from the park and relocated to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.

Brook trout are native to the Great Smoky Mountains, the Smokies are home to a diverse bird population due to the presence of multiple forest types. Species that thrive in southern hardwood forests, such as the redeyed vireo, wood thrush, wild turkey, northern parula, ruby throated hummingbird, tufted titmouse, are found throughout the range’s lower elevations and cove hardwood forests. Species more typical of cooler climates, such as the raven, winter wren, black capped chickadee, yellow bellied sapsucker, darkeyed junco, Blackburnian, chestnut sided, and Canada Wablers, are found in the range’s spruce-fir and northern hardwood zones.

Ovenbirds, whip-poor-wills, downy woodpeckers live in the drier pine-oak forests and heath balds. Bald eagles, golden eagles have been spotted at all elevations in the park. Peregrine falcon sightings are also not uncommon, and a peregrine falcon eyrie is known to have existed near Alum Cave Bluffs throughout the 1930s. Red tailed hawks, the most common hawk species, have been sighted at all elevations in the range. Owl species residing in the Smokies include the barred owl, eastern screech owl, and northern saw whet owl.

Timber rattlesnakes, one of two venomous snake species in the Smokies are found at all elevations in the range. The other venomous snake, the copperhead, is typically found at lower elevations. Other reptiles include the eastern box turtle, eastern fence lizard, the black rat snake, and the northern water snake.

The Great Smokies are home to one of the world’s most diverse salamander populations. Five of the world’s nine families of salamanders are found in the range, consisting of up to thirty-one species. A type of Jordan?s salamander known as the redcheeked salamander is found only in the Smokies. The imitator salamander is found only in the Smokies and the nearby Plott Balsams and Great Balsam Mountains.

Two other species of southern gray cheeked salamander and the Southern Appalachian salamander occur only in the general region. Other species include the shovelnose salamander, blackbelly salamander, eastern red spotted newt, and spotted dusky salamander. The legendary hellbender inhabits the range’s swifter streams. Other amphibians include the American toad, American bullfrog, wood frog, upland chorus frog, northern green frog, and spring peeper.

Fish inhabiting the streams of the Smokies include trout, lamprey, darter, shier, bass, and sucker. The brook trout is the only trout species native to the range, although northwestern rainbow trout and European brown trout were introduced in the first half of the 20th century. The larger rainbow and brown trout outcompete the native brook trout for food and habitat at lower elevations. As such, most of the brook trout found in the park today are in streams above 3,000 feet in elevation. Trout in the Smokies are generally smaller than other members of their species in different locales. Protected fish species in the range include the smoky and yellowfin madtom, the spotfin chub, and the duskytail darter.

The lightning bug firefly Photinus carolinus, whose synchronized flashing light displays occur in mid-June, is native to the Smoky Mountains with a population epicenter near Elkmont, Tennessee.