Some photos we took at the Park

About the Smoky Mountains

The Smoky Mountains

The Smoky Mountains are among the oldest mountains in the world. World renowned for their biological diversity, these mountains are home to five different forest types, over 1,500 species of flowering plants, and about 4,000 non-flowering plants.

The Park offers 800 square miles of spectacular flora, 900 miles of hiking trails, and stunning mountain vistas. The Cherokee Indians moved into the Park area approximately 1000 years ago. Then, pioneer settlements arrived in the area about 200 years ago.

The Park biosphere contains more than 130 species of trees (more varieties than are found in all of Europe), 1500 varieties of flowering plants, and is one of the few places in the Eastern US where black bears and other large animals roam wild. The Smokies have the most complex topography in the Southern Appalachians, with elevations ranging from 840 to 6600 feet above sea level.

Smoky Mtn Park Operating Hours & Seasons

The "Smoke" in Smokies

The Smokies were the ancestral home of the Cherokee Indian Nation. Their name for the mountains was, Sha-co-na-qe, meaning "place of blue smoke."

Why the smoke?
The moist environment from streams and waterfalls interacts with the emissions from the abundant plant life to form the mist that ring the mountains.

Why such plant and wildlife diversity?
Over millions of years, as the drifting continents came together. The tremendous pressure from this gradual collision restructured the rocky land masses as they folded into each other and pushed upward into vertical masses. They formed what is now known as the Appalachian Mountains, which stretch over 2,000 miles from Maine to Georgia.

The Great Smoky Mountains are just a small portion of that mountain range. The varied elevations and soil combinations created diverse habitats that differ in temperature, moisture, and sun exposure resulting in the formation of the five different forest types that are found in the Smokies. Some of the plant life in these habitats cannot be found anywhere else in the U.S.

For more about the five forest types, visit the National Park Service Website.

Wildlife in the Smokies

The park is home to around 65 species of mammals, more than 200 different kinds of birds, 50 species of fish, and lots of reptiles and amphibians. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park provides the largest protected bear habitat in the Eastern U.S.

The park's most famous inhabitant is the American Black Bear, with an estimated 1,800 in residence. That’s about two bears per square mile!

Because the different elevations throughout the park affect the kinds of plant life growing in the park, when you visit the different habitats you'll have an opportunity to observe the species of wildlife that feed only in these habitats.

For example, some birds, like the Canadian warbler (pictured here), breed in the spruce-fir forest within the highest ridges because this area is most like the boreal forest of Canada.

At these elevations, you'll might also spy the cute Black-capped Chickadee, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Red-breasted Nuthatch, or a Northern Saw-whet Owl.

At other locations, you'll probably hear a loud chattering before you actually see the red squirrel, known for sitting in trees and and "scolding" you from from high above in a tree!

At our cabin, you can surround yourself with the beauty of the local area just minutes from the Smokies!

Pet Friendly Park Rules:

Pet Regulations in the Park

Download Smoky Mtn National Park Maps