The June 25 open house at the newly-renovated Appalachian Club in Elkmont brought together former summer residents of the vacation community and folks who grew up in the area or descended from Elkmont area families. Imagine what it would have been like to grow up or at least spend summers in this cool mountain [...]
Old-time mountain music is an important part of the rich cultural history of the Great Smoky Mountains. Come listen to some of this historic music at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in this new video with guest video blogger Walter Wuthmann.
I used to dream about discovering Incan gold when I was a little kid… and then I took an archaeology class during high school and realized there was NO WAY I had the patience to slowly scrape dirt away and meticulously record where it came from. In six weeks of excavating, I also found nothing, [...]
Back in the 1920′s, logging companies were stripping these mountains bare and one of the motivations for creating a national park in the Smokies was to save what was left of the ancient forests east of the Mississippi. Horace Kephart, a local writer and avid supporter of a national park, called the old-growth in the [...]