To read about how climate change will affect life in the Great Smoky Mountains click here to read an expert analysis of the effect of global-warming.
To read about how climate change will affect life in the Great Smoky Mountains click here to read an expert analysis of the effect of global-warming.
A second bear incident in the Ski Mountain area of Gatlinburg has again demonstrated the dangers of careless garbage handling in bear country. On October 28, 2006, a 72-year-old woman was returning home from walking her dog when she came around the corner of her house and encountered a female black bear with three cubs. [...]
Growing to more than two feet long, the hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) is the largest salamander in North America. It’s a slimy amphibian with a flattened head and body that lives under submerged rocks and logs. Three years of hellbender research conducted by Dr. Michael Freake of Lee University and myriad students and volunteers has answered [...]
This spring an estimated 1,500 backpackers will set out from Springer Mountain, Georgia with ambitions of following the Appalachian Trail 2,175 miles to Mt. Katahdin, Maine. If past is any indication of future, fewer than 400 hikers will complete the journey this year. Most northbound thru-hikers start in March or April. When they cross Fontana [...]
The folk who called the hills and hollers of the Great Smokies home faced their everyday ailments with self-doctoring, folk remedies, and treatment by local herb or “yarb” doctors and “grannywomen.” Many viewed doctors with suspicion and only called them as a last resort, choosing instead to risk complications of illness rather than calling in [...]
For kids, spring tonic usually meant stomaching a mixture of equal parts sulfur and molasses, thought to thin or purify the blood and “get rid of that lazy feeling.” Sassafras was another common remedy and good “sweater-outer” of fevers. Old timers believed if you drank sassafras in March you wouldn’t need a doctor the rest [...]
Settled in the mid 1800s, “Upper Cosby” was a far flung community of small farms in the watershed of Cosby Creek. The 1900 federal census shows over 1,800 people lived in or near the area of Upper Cosby that became Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Upper Cosby included several loose-knit communities including Gilliland Town, Mountain [...]
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