McDowell County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 44,578. Its county seat is Marion.
Catawba County is a county in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 160,610. Its county seat is Newton, and its largest community is Hickory.
Caldwell County is a county in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As of the 2020 census, the population was 80,652. Its county seat is Lenoir. Caldwell County is part of the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The border between the two states runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 13 million visitors in 2023, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.
The geography of North Carolina falls naturally into three divisions — the Appalachian Mountains in the west, the central Piedmont Plateau, and the eastern Atlantic Coastal Plain. North Carolina covers 53,819 square miles (139,391 km2) and is 503 miles (810 km) wide by 150 miles (241 km) long. The physical characteristics of the state vary from the summits of the Smoky Mountains, an altitude of near seven thousand feet (2,130 m) in the west, sloping eastward to sea level along the coast and beaches of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. The province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap. To the west of the Blue Ridge, between it and the bulk of the Appalachians, lies the Great Appalachian Valley, bordered on the west by the Ridge and Valley province of the Appalachian range.
The French Broad River is a river in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee. It flows 218 miles (351 km) from near the town of Rosman in Transylvania County, North Carolina, into Tennessee, where its confluence with the Holston River at Knoxville forms the beginning of the Tennessee River. The river flows through the counties of Transylvania, Buncombe, Henderson, and Madison in North Carolina, and Cocke, Jefferson, Sevier, and Knox in Tennessee. It drains large portions of the Pisgah National Forest and the Cherokee National Forest.
The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains and form part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province. The range is sometimes called the Smoky Mountains, and the name is commonly shortened to the Smokies. The Smokies are best known as the home of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which protects most of the range. The park was established in 1934 and, with over 11 million visits per year, is the most visited national park in the United States.
The Cherokee National Forest is a United States National Forest located in the U.S. states of Tennessee and North Carolina that was created on June 14, 1920. The forest is maintained and managed by the United States Forest Service. It encompasses an estimated area of 655,598 acres (2,653.11 km2).
The Qualla Boundary or The Qualla is territory held as a land trust by the United States government for the federally recognized Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), who reside in Western North Carolina. The area is part of the large historic Cherokee territory in the Southeast, which extended into eastern Tennessee, western South Carolina, northern Georgia and Alabama. Currently, the largest contiguous portion of the Qualla lies in Haywood, Swain, and Jackson counties and is centered on the community of Cherokee, which serves as the tribal capital of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Smaller, non-contiguous parcels also lie in Graham and Cherokee counties, near the communities of Snowbird and Murphy, respectively.
Joara was a large Native American settlement, a regional chiefdom of the Mississippian culture, located in what is now Burke County, North Carolina, about 300 miles from the Atlantic coast in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Joara is notable as a significant archaeological and historic site, where Mississippian culture-era and European artifacts have been found, in addition to an earthwork platform mound and remains of a 16th-century Spanish fort.
Pisgah National Forest is a National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. It is administered by the United States Forest Service, part of the United States Department of Agriculture. The Pisgah National Forest is completely contained within the state of North Carolina. The forest is managed together with the other three North Carolina National Forests from common headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina. There are local ranger district offices located in Pisgah Forest, Mars Hill, and Nebo.
The Western North Carolina Conference is an Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. This conference serves the western half of the state of North Carolina, with its administrative offices and the office of the bishop being located in Huntersville, North Carolina. It is part of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference.
The Great Indian Warpath (GIW)—also known as the Great Indian War and Trading Path, or the Seneca Trail—was that part of the network of trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans which ran through the Great Appalachian Valley. The system of footpaths extended from what is now upper New York to deep within Alabama. Various Native peoples traded and made war along the trails, including the Catawba, numerous Algonquian tribes, the Cherokee, and the Iroquois Confederacy. The British traders' name for the route was derived from combining its name among the northeastern Algonquian tribes, Mishimayagat or "Great Trail", with that of the Shawnee and Delaware, Athawominee or "Path where they go armed".
The Sugarland Mountain Trail is an American hiking trail, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Sevier County, Tennessee. The trail traverses Sugarland Mountain, a massive ridge running perpendicular to the main crest of the Smokies and effectively dividing the park's north-central section from its northwestern section. Sugarland Mountain is flanked by the deep upper valleys of two of the park's major watersheds— the West Fork of the Little Pigeon River and Little River. The trail passes through several forest types, including deciduous forest at lower elevations, heaths ("hells") along the mountain's backbone formations, and a stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest in the upper elevations. Occasional breaks in the foliage allow for views of Mount Le Conte and Sevier County to the east and Blanket Mountain and the ridges above Elkmont to the west.
Chilhowee was a prehistoric and historic Native American site in present-day Blount and Monroe counties in Tennessee, in what were the Southeastern Woodlands. Although now submerged by the Chilhowee Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River, the Chilhowee site was home to a substantial 18th-century Overhill Cherokee town. It may have been the site of the older Creek village "Chalahume" visited by Spanish explorer Juan Pardo in 1567. The Cherokee later pushed the Muscogee Creek out of this area.
The Pisgah phase is an archaeological phase of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture in Southeast North America. It is associated with the Appalachian Summit area of southeastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and northwestern South Carolina in what is now the United States.
The Piedmont Atlantic megaregion is a neologism created by the Regional Plan Association for an area of the Southeastern United States that contains parts of the states of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The region includes the Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Memphis, Nashville, Research Triangle (Raleigh–Durham), Upstate South Carolina (Greenville–Spartanburg–Anderson), and Greensboro–Winston-Salem–High Point metropolitan areas. The megaregion generally follows the Interstate 85/20 corridor. According to Georgia Tech, the Piedmont Atlantic represents over 12 percent of the total United States population and covers over 243,000 square miles (630,000 km2) of land.
Northeast Georgia is a region of Georgia in the United States. The northern part is also in the North Georgia mountains or Georgia mountain region, while the southern part is still hilly but much flatter in topography. Northeast Georgia is also served by the Asheville/Spartanburg/Greenville/Anderson market.
Too-Cowee, was an important historic Cherokee town located near the Little Tennessee River north of present-day Franklin, North Carolina. It also had a prehistoric platform mound and earlier village built by ancestral peoples. As their expression of public architecture, the Cherokee built a townhouse on top of the mound. It was the place for their community gatherings in their highly decentralized society. The name translates to "pig fat" in English. British traders and colonists referred to Cowee as one of the Cherokee Middle Towns along this river; they defined geographic groupings based in relation to their coastal settlements, such as Charlestown, South Carolina.
