To the Editor:

In compliance with Executive Order 14253, an official sign has now been posted in the Oconaluftee Visitors Center of our beloved (and already beleaguered) Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and, I presume, at all of the hundreds of other sites overseen by the National Park Service.

On Sunday, July 6, with the cooperation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the North Shore Cemetery Association will host decorations at Proctor and Bradshaw cemeteries.  

In a shaded clearing near Mingus Mill lies a cemetery. Small, unmarked rocks sit at the head and foot of each plot, adorned with shimmering coins visitors have left as tokens of respect.

The names, life stories, and even the exact number of people occupying Enloe Cemetery in Great Smoky Mountains National Park have long been lost to history, but interest in this plot of ground has increased in recent years as pieces of the story have come to light. The cemetery is believed to be the final resting place of at least half a dozen Black people who were enslaved by the Mingus family.

It’s not yet 9 a.m. on a weekday, but Alum Cave Trail is already bustling. With parking scarce, hikers might walk nearly a mile to reach the trailhead along Newfound Gap Road.

“I’ve probably already talked to 20 people,” says Joshua Albritton, supervisory preventative search and rescue ranger for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, joining PSAR Ranger Cutter Wheeler at the trailhead around a quarter after nine.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park will offer the first Cades Cove vehicle-free day of the year on June 18. Vehicle-free days provide opportunities for pedestrians and cyclists to experience the 11-mile Cades Cove Loop Road without motor vehicles. 

This summer and fall, visitors can enjoy family-friendly programs in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, starting June 7. Visitors are invited to take a hike with a ranger, learn about mountain life, meet some of the creatures that call the Smokies’ home, trek into the dark and much more.  

The National Park Service will complete important maintenance along popular roads in Great Smoky Mountains National Park this June. This will require temporary partial closures of Little River Road and single-lane closures along the Spur to allow park staff to safely and efficiently complete this work.  

Birds, bees, bears, dragonflies, salamanders, hemlocks, fungi. Scientific research in Great Smoky Mountains National Park addresses a wide swath of subjects. From Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and states much farther away, scientists from several disciplines have found the park fertile ground for inquiry.

Somewhere after 2 p.m. on a sunny Wednesday in mid-March, the chaotic wind of a descending helicopter whipped the calm skies above the Appalachian Trail near Icewater Spring Shelter. Four people — two Smoky Mountains Hiking Club volunteers and two Appalachian Trail Conservancy employees — waited at the intersection of the Boulevard and Appalachian trails, watching the bundle of black locust logs suspended below the chopper come to a gentle rest in the small forest opening.

One of the best things about the mountains of Western North Carolina is that even in places we’ve seen a hundred times, we can always find something new and intriguing. This is a lesson Nancy East, an avid hiker and seasoned search-and-rescue operator, learned over and over again as she wrote her second book, “Historic Hikes in Western North Carolina.”