The Great Smoky Mountains—also simply called the Smoky Mountains or the Smokies—form one of the great landmarks of the United States, showcased as they are in the country’s most-visited national park and constituting some of the highest, most rugged, and wildest terrain in the East. By some definitions, they’re also the largest single mountain range in the eastern U.S.
In the following article, we’ll orient you to some of the basics of Smoky Mountain geography and describe this magical range’s location in various natural contexts.
Location of the Great Smoky Mountains
The Great Smoky Mountains lie along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeastern U.S., with the bulk of the range protected in the 522,427-acre Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
They’re among the best-known individual ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, which stretch some 2,000 miles between central Alabama in the south and Newfoundland in the north and rank among the geologically oldest highlands in the world.
Unsurprisingly for such a long chain, the Appalachians are commonly subdivided in various ways by geographers, geologists, and cultural historians. The Great Smokies are among the ranges of the Southern Appalachians, the southernmost reach, host to the highest mountains in the entire Appalachian chain. Although the boundaries are not exact and vary depending on who you talk to, the Southern Appalachians are commonly taken to run from southern West Virginia southward. (Some schemes use Pennsylvania as the crude dividing line between the Northern and Southern Appalachians.)
Moist maritime airmasses from the Gulf of Mexico and, to some extent, the Atlantic are wrung out by the steep and high rise of the Southern Appalachians, which makes them generally wetter than the northerly ranges, and—along with the balmier climate and status as a floral refuge during the ice ages of the Pleistocene—accounts for their famous, fabulous lushness.
The Blue Ridge Province: Apex of the Appalachians
The Southern Appalachians include several so-called physiographic provinces: geographic units defined by geologists based on terrain and geologic makeup. The unit to which the Great Smokies belong is the Blue Ridge Province, which stretches between southern Pennsylvania and northern Georgia and is bordered by the Valley-and-Ridge Province to the west and the Piedmont Province to the east.
North of the Roanoke, Virginia vicinity, the Blue Ridge Province has a narrow crest, but south of it the province widens considerably—and also gets significantly higher.
Indeed, it’s the Blue Ridge Province, the heart of the Southern Appalachians, which accounts for the loftiest terrain in the whole highland belt of the Appalachians and, indeed, in mainland North America east of the Mississippi. More than 50 peaks here surpass 6,000 feet (nicknamed the “Southern Sixers”), whereas only a single Appalachian eminence north of the Blue Ridge Province—Mount Washington in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire—hits that elevational mark.
The Great Smoky Mountains are part of the true rooftop of the Southern Appalachians, along with such nearby Blue Ridge ranges as the Black Mountains, the Great Balsams, the Plott Balsams, the Great Craggies, and the Roan Highlands.
Several of the very highest Appalachian peaks—including the third-highest, 6,643-foot Kuwohi (formerly Clingmans Dome), only overshadowed by two summits in North Carolina’s Black Mountains—lie in the Great Smokies. Sixteen “Southern Sixers” fall within the bounds of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including Mount Guyot (6,621 feet), Mount LeConte (6,593 feet), and Mount Buckley (6,580 feet).
The Unaka Mountains
In addition to their membership in the Southern Appalachians and the Blue Ridge Province, the Great Smokies are sometimes described as a central part of a larger highland block called the Unaka Mountains. Other subranges included in some definitions of the Unakas (which get their name from the Cherokee word for “white”) are the Unicoi Mountains (which border the Great Smokies to the south), the Bald Mountains (just north of the Great Smokies), and the Iron Mountains.
It’s worth emphasizing that a single mountain range on the Tennessee-North Carolina line, set between the Watauga and Nolichuky rivers and encompassing the Roan Highlands, is also known as the Unaka Mountains (or Unaka Range). In other words, folks using that label may be referring broadly to a collection of high ranges along the western reaches of the southern Blue Ridge Province or a much narrower piece of country.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The UNESCO World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve of Great Smoky Mountains National Park comes split about down the middle by the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The park falls within Sevier, Blount, and Cocke counties in East Tennessee and Swain and Haywood counties in Western North Carolina, with “gateway towns” including Gatlinburg, TN and Cherokee, NC. It’s at the southern end of the famed Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs north to Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park.
The location of Great Smoky Mountains National Park puts it within a day’s drive of more than half the entire U.S. population—one reason why, as we noted up top, it hosts more visitors (more than 10 million annually in the past 10 years, with 14.2 million coming in 2021) than any other American national park.
Of course, it’s not just the park’s relative proximity to major metro areas that explains its popularity: From giant hardwoods, dazzling wildflowers, and epic fall colors to black bears and pioneer cabins, the sightseeing in the Great Smokies is world-class, and better than 800 miles of trails make the park one of the standout hiking destinations in the country. This is the most biologically diverse unit in the U.S. National Park System.
And despite the high visitation, solitude and quiet are surprisingly easy to come by: Most of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is roadless backcountry.
All in all, the Great Smokies are a downright remarkable mountain range, and the national park covering most of it is a global treasure!
