Episode Details

Twelve million people visit the Smokies every year — more than Grand Canyon and Yellowstone combined. But unlike almost every other major park, the federal government didn't set this land aside from territory it already owned. It had to be bought, farm by farm, from thousands of families, with schoolchildren donating pennies and Rockefeller closing the gap. This kicks off the Wildlands Great Smoky Mountains trilogy.

Host Shawn Spainhour, a former Army officer, traces the full arc. The Cherokee homeland — Shaconage, the place of blue smoke — and twelve thousand years of presence in one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions on Earth. The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, and the story of Tsali, the man who surrendered himself so a remnant of his people could stay — the ancestors of the Eastern Band still living on the Qualla Boundary today. Then the Appalachian farming families of Cades Cove, the industrial logging that nearly stripped the last old-growth forest east of the Mississippi, and the improbable seventeen-year campaign to buy the park into existence. Plus the lifetime leases, the holdouts who fought to the state supreme court, the CCC crews who built it, and why there's still no entrance fee to this day.

This is Part 1 of the Wildlands Great Smoky Mountains series. Part 2 covers the visit; Part 3 covers where to stay.

Wildlands — know the land before you reach it.