The One National Park In Tennessee That Every True Tennessean Should Visit At Least Once
By Meghan Kraft|Published April 20, 2021
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Meghan Kraft
Author
Meghan Kraft loves to travel the world, but she makes her home right here in Nashville, Tennessee. She holds a degree in English, and has worked in the digital marketing realm with companies such as Apartments.com, USA Today and HarperCollins Publishing.
There are 63 national parks in the United States, with beautiful, protected natural expanses scattered across the nation. You’ll find Zion National Park in Utah, the famed Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the Redwood State Park in California. Of course, if you call Tennessee your home, then you’ve most likely heard of the state’s claim to fame: the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We’ve compiled some of the neatest facts about the park below, perhaps to encourage you to make a trip there yourself. There’s something magical about the Smokies, and we’re about to show you why…
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most-visited National Park in the United States with a whopping 12.1 million folks visiting every year. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is the next most visited park, with a scant 3.8 million visitors in comparison.
The park is popular for its mountainous beauty, the rustic waterways and rivers that stripe the natural expanse, and more than 800 miles of trails that cut through the park. The Smokies are actually considered one of the most popular and challenging hiking destinations in the eastern United States.
In fact, if you're looking to hike through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you can actually meander along the famed Appalachian Trail. More than 71 miles run through the park, entering at Fontana Dam and exiting on the northeastern side of the park at Davenport Gap.
The park is also popular because there is no entrance fee, making it affordable and fun for folks from all over the nation. The reason is that the land was once privately owned, and when ownership was transferred during the construction of Newfound Gap Road it was stated that "no toll or license fee shall ever be imposed" along the road. Pretty neat, right?
You'll also find one of the largest, most diverse compilations of plants and animals in the park. There are more than 4,000 plants and specifically 140 different species of just trees throughout the Smokies. Keep an eye out for more than 1,500 bears that live here in the forest and in the water, you'll find 67 native fish species. It's wild out there!
The Great Smoky Mountains are considered by some to be between 200 and 300 million years old, which would make them one of the oldest mountain ranges on the globe. Since temperatures hardly crack 80 degrees, it's easy to spend a long weekend experiencing all the natural history the park has to offer.
You can also learn about the people who settled throughout the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are more than 90 historic structures in the park, including old houses, schools, mills, and even churches. You can learn about the Cherokee who once called the area home as well, once referring to the area as the "Land of the Blue Smoke."
All of the National Parks in the United States are beautiful, but we have a soft spot for the Smokies. If you want to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for yourself, we’d recommend its official website for research purposes, or perhaps even right here.
