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Trailside Talk: Ode to Winter
By Mike Hembree; photo by Ann Froschauer
It’s no surprise that most of the approximately 12 million people who visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a normal year do so in four months: June, July, August, and October.
The summer months, of course, mean vacations for families, and they offer the Smokies at their greenest. October
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Park recruits volunteers for monitoring program
Martin Luther King Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities. In honor of Dr. King's legacy, we share this upcoming opportunity to volunteer to observe visitor use patterns in the Smokies.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is recruiting
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North Carolina Field Station Enhances Park Research
By Frances Figart, Creative Services Director
The house on Limby Birch Mountain at The Purchase provides bunkhouse-style lodging for up to 11 researchers. Photo courtesy of NPS.
The southeastern corner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park lies in Haywood County on the southeastern side of the Cataloochee Divide.
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Image for the Asking: Reflections on the Past
Story and image by Don McGowan
William Ogle and his wife Martha Huskey were the first Euro-American settlers in the area of what would—by way of first being called White Oak Flats—one day become Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They arrived in the early 1800s (1803 by their own historical accounting), and in time their descendants spread
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Keeping Black Bears Wild and People Safe
The human-bear conflict will always be a concern in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This article recently published on National Parks Traveler—a nonprofit media organization dedicated to covering national parks and protected areas—is shared here to emphasize the importance of BearWise awareness.
Black bear
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Permanent Camp: Evergreen Strategies
By George Ellison with illustration by Elizabeth Ellison
Winter simplifies, scaling life down to the bare essentials. Solitude is surer then. The muted browns and grays of the soil and stones display a somber intensity. There are no curtains of leaves to obstruct vision. And winter outings provide an opportunity to observe evergreen plants more
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New Bee Discovered After Chimney Tops II Fires
By Frances Figart
New pollinators like the cellophane-cuckoo bee have moved into the Smokies after the Chimney Tops II fires. Photo courtesy of Will Kuhn
Great Smoky Mountains National Park has a new bee. It’s a variety of cellophane-cuckoo bee called Epeolus inornatus discovered by researchers studying how the
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Image for the Asking: The Road Less Traveled
Story and image by Don McGowan
Before the autumn escapes completely into winter and the light begins slowly to turn into spring, I want to speak about one of my favorite locations for fall color. In this place you will not find the perspective of a great vista; there are no waves of mountain ridges receding into the distance as far as one&
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Smoky Mountain Air Podcast: Meet author Morgan Simmons and Illustrator Don Wood, talents behind GSMA's newest children's book, Singing Creek
On our latest episode of Smoky Mountain Air, we talk to Morgan Simmons and Don Wood, the author and illustrator of Singing Creek—a new book published by GSMA that takes young readers on an adventure of music and survival in the world of a Smoky Mountain stream. Morgan Simmons is a former outdoor editor for the Knoxville News Sentinel.
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Wildlife Biologist for Eastern Band of Cherokee Shares Indigenous Knowledge
by Frances Figart, Creative Services Director
The supervisory fisheries and wildlife biologist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is Caleb Hickman. But Hickman is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, one of two other federally recognized Cherokee tribes.
“We share a common ancestry here in the mountains,” Hickman
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