Great Smoky Mountains National Park

USA · North America · Visited 23 November 2025 · Established 1934

The Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited national park in the United States. Over 12 million people a year come here, more than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon combined. It's not hard to see why. The park sits within a day's drive of two-thirds of the US population and it's free to enter (although you should pay $5 for a car permit if you plan to park up anywhere in the park for longer than 15 minutes). The Southern Appalachians are among the most biodiverse temperate forests on the planet, and the gateway towns offer enough to fill a week without setting foot on a trail. For families, for road-trippers, for people who want a national park experience without the remoteness of the American West, this is the obvious choice.

I understand the appeal, but the sheer volume of people and the accessibility can put you off. That said, as soon as I went on trails there were few people passing by. I'd love to come back and hike the full stretch of the Appalachian Trail through the park, over 70 miles of ridgeline through some of the most ancient mountains in the world. But that will have to wait until this ridiculous mission of visiting every national park on Earth is behind me.

The hike

I managed 28 kilometres of the Appalachian Trail on my visit, hiking to the Kuwohi observation deck at 2,025 metres, the highest point in the park. Kuwohi (recently renamed from Clingmans Dome to honour the Cherokee name meaning "mulberry place") offers a 360-degree panorama from its distinctive concrete observation tower. On a clear day you can see for over 100 miles. I couldn't even see 10 metres, it was that foggy, so I'll take the word for it. The trail up is demanding in places, climbing steadily through spruce-fir forest that feels more like Canada than the American South, with gnarled trees draped in moss and the air noticeably cooler than the valleys below. I was hoping to bump into some bears at a distance, but this did not happen.

The drive in

I approached from the south, driving up from Atlanta. It's a scenic drive as the landscape shifts from Georgia's rolling piedmont into the blue ridges of North Carolina. At the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, I'd barely stepped out of the car when I was greeted by elk. A small herd was grazing casually on the grass right by the car park, completely unbothered by visitors. It's not every national park where the wildlife introduces itself before you've even bought your parking tag.

Gatlinburg

Gatlinburg deserves its own mention. The town sits right at the park's northern entrance in Tennessee and feels like Christmas all year round. Fairy lights, candy shops, pancake houses stacked on top of each other, and a general atmosphere of cheerful, unapologetic American tourism. It's not subtle, but it's fun, and it's part of what makes the Smokies experience so different from other national parks. It's also bear country. The park is home to around 1,500 black bears, roughly two per square mile, and they wander into town regularly. You can quite literally bump into one around any corner.

Who it's for

The Great Smoky Mountains is the people's national park. It's accessible, varied, and packed with things to do for every type of visitor. If you want solitude, you'll have to work for it (the backcountry trails thin the crowds quickly), but if you want a national park that combines serious natural beauty with easy logistics and a lively surrounding scene, this is hard to beat. It's not my favourite, but I can see exactly why it's so many people's number one.