Great Smoky Mountains National Park
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How it came to be
The Great Smoky Mountains were Cherokee land. In 1805 the Cherokee ceded control of the range to the United States government, and in 1818 John and Lucretia Oliver became the first settlers in Cades Cove. Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, and in 1838 most of the Cherokee were forced west on the Trail of Tears. The few who kept land stayed on and later formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee.
Lumber companies moved in at the start of the 20th century; the Little River Lumber Company logged the Little River watershed from 1901 to 1939. Logging removed two-thirds of the virgin forest. In the early 1920s the Knoxville businessman David Chapman and others began pressing seriously for a national park, and the commission he led negotiated the purchase of thousands of small farms, completing most major purchases by 1932.
The park was established on 15 June 1934. More than 90 percent of its roughly 209,000 hectares across Tennessee and North Carolina is managed as wilderness, with about 1,300 native vascular plant species and 31 species of salamander. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1983.
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