The Great Smokies Park is roughly 54 miles long and 19 miles wide at the
widest point. It is oval shaped. Except for a few high, level pastures,
it is tremendously rugged throughout its entirety. It has 16 peaks more
than 6000 feet high.
Vegetation is lush, clear to the top of the highest peak. There is no
timberline in these mountains. Balsam and spruce grow thick in the upper
regions. In summer the rainfall is almost tropical, and in winter heavy
snows blanket the trees and slopes into a fairyland.
Almost constantly a gray haze hangs like a thin veil over the pile after
pile of far, high, ridges. That is why these mountains are called The
Smokies. They say that no one knows for sure what causes this haze, but
one explanation credits it to tiny particles of moisture rising from the
heavily-soaked vegetation.
The park is half in Tennessee and half in North Carolina. The high,
sharp backbone of the Smokies cuts the park in two, and along this
backbone runs the state line. A horse trail follows this backbone the
length of the Park, but there is no motor road up there.
A fine macadam highway crosses the Park, from Gatlinburg to Cherokee, on
the Carolina side. And a few gravel roads stab short distances into the
hills from several entrances.
Aside from that, the public must take to foot or horseback to see the
vast, beckoning interior of the Park. And since taking to foot is one of
life’s accomplishments which I am most prodigious at, to coin a phrase,
we shall take to foot in a Herculean way about tomorrow.