Winner of the 2024 Project Excellence Award from East Tennessee Historical Society

Within the archives of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a wealth of knowledge is tucked away in more than a million time-worn documents. Letters from the Smokies, written by the park’s librarian-archivist, makes some of the most salient of its letters readily available for the first time. Meet a Tennessee woman who wrote about Southern life under a male pseudonym. Follow celebrated ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson on an epic road trip that included the Smokies. Learn how an artificial lake would have engulfed the park’s beloved Cades Cove. And hear the remarkable tale of a Smokies bobcat gifted to a US president. These letters sensitively presented, explained, and contextualized by author Mike Aday manage to capture centuries of history in a way that makes this region’s tangled story tangible, immediate, and recognizably human.