For a great outdoor experience, visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can take in a wide variety of activities such as hiking, biking, fishing, horseback riding and animal viewing. It's a great experience for the entire family.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park consists of ridges of endless forest that stretch across the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. It is one of the largest protected areas in America and is well known for its diversity of flora and fauna, as well as the beauty of the rugged Smokies. Here, visitors will find remnants of Appalachian culture as well as a sanctuary for animal life. Each year over nine million people visit the park that was once home to the Cherokee. The park covers over 800 square miles within the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Over 10,000 species of flora and fauna have been recorded and it’s believed there may be as many as 90,000 more within the park’s boundaries. Mountain elevations within the park range from 875 to 6,643 feet.
Ancient Mountains
It is believed that the Great Smoky Mountains were formed 200 to 300 million years ago. Their unique northeast to southwest orientation allowed animals to migrate along their slopes during the last ice age ten thousand years ago. At that time glaciers transformed much of North America and though the Smokies were affected, the glaciers didn’t invade them. This made the mountains a perfect refuge for thousands of species of flora and fauna that were disrupted in the north.
Species
Over one hundred species of trees are native to the park. This is more than any other park in North America. Ninety-five percent of the park is covered in forests. Of this twenty-five percent is old growth. This gives Great Smoky Mountains the largest area of deciduous old growth forest in North America.
Four thousand species of non-flowering plants have been discovered in the park, as well as fourteen hundred flowering plant species. Fauna consists of over two hundred bird species, sixty-six mammal species, thirty-nine reptile species, fifty native fish species and forty-three amphibian species. Besides these, lungless salamanders, mollusks, millipedes and mushrooms flourish.
The park’s unique and diverse natural resources encouraged the United Nations to designate Great Smoky Mountains National Park an International Biosphere Reserve.