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| Joseph de Ca'th Lon in Great Smoky Mountains |
Joseph de Ca'th Lon is visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park to celebrate the 83th Anniversary of its declaration as a National Park.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a United States National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The border between Tennessee and North Carolina runs northeast to southwest through the centerline of the park. It is the most visited national park in the United States with over 11.3 million recreational visitors in 2016. On its route from Maine to Georgia, the Appalachian Trail also passes through the center of the park.
More information: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Former Governor Ben W. Hooper of Tennessee was the principal land purchasing agent for the park, which was officially established on 15 June 1934. The park was chartered by the United States Congress the same year and officially dedicated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940.
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| Bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park |
It was the first national park whose land and other costs were paid for in part with federal funds; previous parks were funded wholly with state money or private funds. Due to the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, the Park was under evacuation orders, along with some towns and cities located nearby.
Before the arrival of European settlers, the region was part of the homeland of the Cherokees. Frontiers people began settling the land in the 18th and early 19th century. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, beginning the process that eventually resulted in the forced removal of all Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to what is now Oklahoma. Many of the Cherokee left, but some, led by renegade warrior Tsali, hid out in the area that is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Some of their descendants now live in the Qualla Boundary to the south of the park.
More information: Cherokee Nation
This park was designated an International Biosphere Reserve in 1976, was certified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, and became a part of the Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve in 1988.
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| Joseph in the National Park Visitors Center |
Early Precambrian rocks are not only the oldest rocks in the park but also the dominant rock type in sites such as the Raven Fork Valley and upper Tuckasegee River between Cherokee and Bryson City.
They primarily consist of metamorphic gneiss, granite, and schist. Cambrian sedimentary rocks can be found among the bottom of the Foothills to the northwest and in limestone coves such as Cades Cove. One of the most visited attractions in the mountains is Cades Cove which is a window or an area where older rocks made out of sandstone surround the valley floor of younger rocks made out of limestone.
More information: Hiking the Smokys - Appalachian Trail
The oldest rocks in the Smokies are the Precambrian gneiss and schists which were formed over a billion years ago from the accumulation of marine sediments and igneous rock. In the Late Precambrian, the primordial ocean expanded and the more recent Ocoee Supergroup rocks formed from the accumulation of eroding land mass onto the continental shelf. In the Paleozoic Era, the ocean deposited a thick layer of marine sediments which left behind sedimentary rock. During the Ordovician Period, the collision of the North American and African tectonic plates initiated the Alleghenian orogeny that created the Appalachian range. During the Mesozoic Era rapid erosion of softer sedimentary rocks re-exposed the older Ocoee Supergroup formations.
I'm proud of being part Cherokee,
and I think it's time all us Indians felt the same way.
Loretta Lynn
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