What makes the Great Smoky Mountains smoky?

The US is home to 63 stunning national parks. But the most visited one, the Great Smoky Mountains. The Smokies are amazing, particularly because of their beautiful landscapes and biodiversity. I particularly love "Smoky streams," which are these cascading, tumbling, beautiful bits of water. We get a lot of folks who come here for the leaf season, but the colors are vibrant all year round, and we're so fortunate to be in this beautiful place. These mountains are widely called shaconage, which is a Cherokee word meaning blue. People often embellish the translation to say the land of blue smoke or the place of blue smoke. There's a Dolly Parton song that's famous that uses that word. But what gives these mountains their iconic blue hazy effect? And what is their significance to the Cherokee people? The Smoky Mountains are located on the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina. In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill authorizing the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It's over 500,000 acres and home to over 20,000 documented species. The Smokies' location and landscape contribute to its temperate climate. My name is Stephanie Kyriazis and I'm the chief of resource education here at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I think the landscape is much more dramatic in person. You get on some of the ridges or some of the overlooks and there's just layer after layer of mountains that you can see. This helps to create the weather pattern called orographic precipitation or relief rainfall. It's a temperate rainforest. We do get a significant amount of precipitation the difference from the rainforest you may think about. It's not as warm and humid, but we do get a significant amount of rain in the Smokies. Warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is forced up by the mountains. As the air rises, it cools, causing the water vapor to condense into water droplets and forming clouds. And when the clouds grow larger and can no longer hold the condensed water, rainfall occurs. This rainfall is part of the reason why the Smokies appear smoky. But the direct cause of this blue smoke is something a little more green. Smokies are also smoky because all of that vegetation does sort of release a kind of a gas that that leads to a little bit of haze under some conditions. This gas is known as VOC's, volatile organic compounds. The trees and vegetation expelling water vapor are part of what creates this haze. You can think of it as the forest breathing. The molecules from this haze scatter light from the sky, making a blueish hue. The Great Smoky Mountains, lush forest, and natural resources made it the perfect place for new settlers to begin their lives in the Americas. But as you can imagine, they were not the first people to be enchanted by the Smokies. So, I don't know if you can tell by the video yet, but the Great Smoky Mountains are more than just a place you read about. It's something you have to experience for yourself. From the acres of misty forest to the tiniest of critters, the Smokies are truly alive. And that sense of wonder and adventure doesn't have to stop there. Beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains where the Smokies are in North Carolina, you'll find quiet towns, museums like the Museum of Cherokee people, beautiful hiking trails, and restaurants that feel distinctly North Carolina. There's really a little bit of something for everyone there. So, for real, visit North Carolina. And now, let's get back to the video because there is so much more I want you to see. My name is Shana Bushyhead Condill. I'm a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and I'm honored to serve as the executive director of the Museum of the Cherokee People. As Cherokee people, we know that we are of this place. And when we say that, what we're saying is that since time immemorial, we know that we have been here. The Smoky Mountains are in the heart of historic Cherokee homeland, and their presence in this region dates back thousands of years. The Cherokees' territory covered much of what we know today as West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, which means that by the time Europeans reached the Smokies in the 1500s, Cherokee settlements were already established throughout the region. There were townships that span that whole ancestral territory. And there would have been areas and land that would have been more contested or even shared with other tribes for like hunting and that kind of a thing. But with the arrival of European settlers came smallpox, raids, and destruction of Cherokee villages, and forced displacement of native people from their homes. The US government passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which in time led to ethnic cleansing and displacement of nearly 100,000 native people. This decade of massacre and capture is known as the Trail of Tears. Several hundred Cherokee people hid in the Smoky Mountains to evade their captors. Some were able to use the law to reacquire their lands, and others managed to return after the forced removal. Today, their descendants are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The story of how we came to be the Eastern Band and how we came to be in this place is a story that started immediately after removal in 1838 and continues today. We are still working to acquire land back. We all hold ties to this place. So, we have generation upon generation of folks who also call these mountains home. Today, the Cherokee people are continuing to advocate for the restoration of their history in the Smokies and other parts of the US. One of the big wins in recent memory about a year ago now is that the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains was named after a Confederate general. And we had two Cherokee women who worked tirelessly to get the name restored back to Kuwohi, which is our name for that sacred space. The Great Smoky Mountains are not just one of the most magical national parks you can visit in the US, they're also a testament to the enduring link between land and identity. It's home to an abundance of biodiversity and remains a place where terrain served as protection for indigenous people. But preservation of this land is an active endeavor. So when a lot of people come to the Smokies, they see this beautiful forested landscape and imagine that it's been that way forever. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, the park was almost completely clear-cut by logging companies that were working in the mountains. It really took the last hundred years for that forest to recover. And so today, you know, most people think of the the Smokies as a very forested landscape, but there are really only a handful of patches where we have true old growth trees that still remain. For a forest biologist, our landscape will still look like it's in its adolescence, maybe. Most people when they come to the Smokies can't tell that it ever was a practically barren landscape. Coupled with pollution and the effects of climate change, there's still plenty to be done to look after this treasure in southern Appalachia. To come and actually experience these mountains and these views and the expanses, I mean, I will always believe that it is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in the world.