Big South Fork

The free-flowing Big South Fork of the Cumberland River and its tributaries pass through 90 miles of scenic gorges and valleys containing a wide range of natural and historic features. The area offers a broad range of recreational opportunities including camping, whitewater rafting, kayaking, canoeing, hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, hunting and fishing. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with its experience in managing river basins, was charged with land acquisition, planning and development of facilities. Now completed, these lands and facilities are operated and maintained by the National Park Service for the benefit and use of the public.
Cumberland Gap

 

The story of the first doorway to the west is commemorated at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, located where the borders of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia meet. Carved by wind and water, Cumberland Gap forms a major break in the formidable Appalachian Mountain chain. First used by large game animals in their migratory journeys, followed by Native Americans, the Cumberland Gap was the first and best avenue for the settlement of the interior of this nation. From 1775 to 1810, the Gap's heyday, between 200,000 and 300,000 men, women, and children crossed the Gap into the unknown land of Kentucky.

 
Appalachian
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail is a 2,167-mile (3,488 km) footpath along the ridge crests and across the major valleys of the Appalachian Mountains from Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in north Georgia. The trail traverses Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. The Appalachian Trail (A.T.) is used by day, weekend and other short-term hikers, section hikers and thru-hikers. Thru-

hikers hike the entire length of the Trail in one season.
The A.T. began as a vision of forester Benton MacKaye, and was developed by volunteers and opened as a continuous trail in 1937. It was designated as the first National Scenic Trail by the National Trails System Act of 1968. The Trail is currently protected along more than 99 percent of its course by federal or state ownership of the land or by rights-of-way. Annually, more than 4,000 volunteers contribute over 175,000 hours of effort on the Appalachian Trail.

 
Andrew Johnson
When 17 year old Andrew Johnson came to Greeneville from Raleigh, NC in 1826, little did he imagine that his industrious work as a tailor, his ardent desire for further education, and his keen interest in the civil affairs of his fellow men would lead him from his simple tailor's shop in Tennessee to the Presidency of the United States.
His roll in local and state government served well to prepare him for the critical issues he would face in his future career. He would be the only southern Senator to remain in Congress at the outbreak of the Civil War.

President Lincoln would appoint him to be Military Governor of Tennessee and later select him as his running mate in 1864. After assuming the presidency, he risked removal from office in order to protect the human rights of citizens of the defeated states. He remains the only former President to return and serve in the US Senate.
Today in Greeneville you may visit among the surroundings that were so very much a part of his life.

 
Great Smokey Mountains
The national park, in the states of North Carolina and Tennessee, encompasses 800 square miles of which 95 percent are forested. World renowned for the diversity of its plant and animal resources, the beauty of its ancient mountains, the quality of its remnants of Southern Appalachian mountain culture, and the depth and integrity of the wilderness sanctuary within its boundaries, it is one of the largest protected areas in the east.
The Great Smoky Mountains, the majestic climax of the Appalachian Highlands, are a wildlands

sanctuary preserving the world's finest examples of temperate deciduous forest. The park boasts unspoiled forests similar to those the early settlers found. Wildflowers and migrating birds abound in late April and early May. Autumn's pageantry of colors usually peaks in mid- October. Some 800 miles of trails thread the whole of the Smokies' natural fabric - and its waterfalls, coves, balds, and rushing streams. The Smokies, a wild landscape rich with traces of its human past, calls people back year after year.

 
Chickamauga
Between 1890 and 1899 the Congress of the United States authorized the establishment of the first four national military parks: Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. The first and largest of these, and the one upon which the establishment and development of most other national military and historical parks was based, was Chickamauga and Chattanooga. It owes its existence largley to the efforts of General H.V. Boynton and Ferdinand Van Derveer, both veterans of the Army of the Cumberland, who saw the need

for a national park to preserve and commemorate these battlefields during a visit to the area in 1888