GEOSC 10
Geology of the National Parks

Still More Plate Tectonics, The Great Smoky Mountains

Still More Plate Tectonics, The Great Smoky Mountains

The Smokies--and State College?

Left: Appalachian Mountains in the sunset. Right: Great Smoky Mountains on a map in TN and NC.
Left: Scenic view of the folded Appalachian Mountains in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Right: Location of the Great Smoky Mountains in both North Carolina and Tennessee.
Credit: R.B. Alley © Penn State is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

As usual, we start with a little background on our featured National Park, this time The Great Smoky Mountain National Park of North Carolina and Tennessee. Then, we get into the material that might be on the RockOn Quiz, starting with the first virtual tour below and then discussing obduction zones. The Great Smokies include 16 mountains over 6,000 feet (about 2,000 m) high, making this generally the highest region in North America east of the Mississippi River. The tourist town of Gatlinburg is a mile (1.6 km) lower than Mt. Le Conte, a difference almost as large as in many of the great mountain parks of the west, where the peaks are higher but so are the valleys. The Smokies were preserved as a park in 1926, with much of the funding for land purchases provided by J.D. Rockefeller. The Great Smokies today are the most-visited National Park because they combine spectacular scenery, rich biological and historical diversity, proximity to major population centers, the lure of a quick stop-off on the drive from the northeast USA to Florida, and a shortage of other nearby national parks to draw off the crowds. (Although we should not forget Shenandoah National Park, which is connected to the Smokies by the Blue Ridge Parkway, another beautiful park.)

In case you’re interested (and no, you do not need to memorize these!), the National Park Service keeps track of visitation, and you can easily find the numbers by searching online. As this text was being written, the Blue Ridge Parkway was the most-visited “park” managed by the National Park Service, but if we restrict attention to the actual National Parks, the numbers of visitors for the most popular parks are outlined in the table below.

Annual Visitors at National Parks
Credit: National Park Service, data from 2021
National Park Number of Visitors
Great Smoky Mountains 14.1 million
Zion 5 million
Yellowstone 4.9 million
Grand Canyon 4.5 million
Rocky Mountain 4.4 million
Acadia 4.0 million
Grand Teton 3.9 million
Yosemite 3.3 million
Indiana Dunes 3.2 million

Much interest in the Smokies centers on its historical aspects. For example, how did the early European settlers survive and flourish in this region? At Cades Cove, wonderful relics of a bygone lifestyle are maintained in a living museum. Many visitors are also seeking to learn about the earlier Native Americans. Biologically, the Smokies host an amazing array of tree species, flowering bushes (azaleas, rhododendrons, and mountain laurels, in particular), wildflowers (including many orchids), and more. Approximately one-third of the park is covered with "virgin" timber that escaped being cut by European settlers in the high, remote landscape, and the regions that were logged are growing back rapidly with impressive stands of diverse trees.

Abundant rainfall and snowfall “scraped” from the sky by the high peaks feed numerous cascades and waterfalls, with trout in the pools and kingfishers by their banks. Rainfall is roughly 50 inches (1.3 m) per year in the valleys and more than 85 inches (2 m) per year on the peaks, so the Smokies share some characteristics with temperate rainforests of the west such as in Olympic. Especially during “off-peak” times when fewer travelers are present, you can get lost in the Smokies, and imagine what the Appalachians must have looked like without humans; approximately 3/4 of the park is wilderness. And, because so many of the visitors are traveling by car and heading somewhere else, even a short walk down a trail can get you away from almost everyone.

To see a little of the park, and to get started on the key ideas that will be on the RockOn Quiz, join Dr. Alley and his team as they take you on a "virtual tour" of Great Smoky Mountain National Park that illustrates some of the key ideas and concepts being covered in Module 4.

Virtual Field Trip: Great Smoky Mountains

Join us as we go on a virtual tour of the. Great Smoky Mountains.