Present Day
Along with the historic sites in the vicinity of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, the park service maintains a large campground at the former logging camp of Smokemont. The small mountain hamlet of Tow String is sandwiched between the national park and Qualla Boundary, just above Oconaluftee. The southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway is at the valley's southern tip, near the river's confluence with Raven Fork.
A 20-mile (32 km) leg of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail connects Oconaluftee with the Appalachian Trail near the summit of Clingmans Dome. The Bradley Fork Trail follows Bradley Fork north from Smokemont to the Cabin Flats area between Hughes Ridge and Richland Mountain. From here, the Dry Sluice Gap Trail continues north to the crest of the Smokies, emerging near Charlies Bunion.
In 1982, the Oconaluftee area was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Oconaluftee Archaeological District.
Read more about this topic: Oconaluftee (Great Smoky Mountains)
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or day:
“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)