The easy 1.5-mile walk to town can be augmented with a bit of exploring once you get there.
Leonard Adkins
John E. Davis spent almost two years building his family’s cabin around 1899, now part of the Mountain Farm Museum.
Every time Laurie and I had been in Cherokee, North Carolina, we had been so obsessed with getting onto the Great Smoky Mountain National Park’s pathways that we just quickly drove by the shops, restaurants, museums and attractions. I finally came up with a plan that let us obtain our walking fix and still have the opportunity to experience the town’s offerings.
The nearly-level Oconaluftee River Trail leaves the national park’s Oconaluftee Visitor Center to immediately come to the Mountain Farm Museum, providing insight into life in these mountains around 1900. I always learn new things in places such as this. This time I was enlightened as to what a beegum is. (I’ll let you learn about it on your own visit here.)
Leonard Adkins
Peter Toth’s “Sequoyah” is carved out of a sequoia log—in front of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
Towering sycamores, maples and poplars provided welcomed shade as the pathway met up with its namesake stream. The quiet of the woods was broken when dozens of families began floating by us in inner tubes. (One Cherokee tubing company claims to be able to put 200 people at a time on the river!) They may have been noisy, but it sure looked like they were having fun.
We saw no elk despite that everyone at the visitor center had almost guaranteed we would. We did, however, enjoy bee balm and jewelweed growing next to our feet and reading several interpretive plaques providing information on how the Cherokee live and relate to the natural world.
The trail comes to an end as it meets the sidewalks of town, part of the Qualla Boundary. In 1838, the US government forced 17,000 Cherokee to walk the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. About 4,000 died along the way. Close to 1,000 managed to remain in the state by escaping into the mountains. After years of hiding, they were permitted to establish the boundary (technically different from a reservation).
The Little Princess Restaurant provided the home-cooked breakfast we had missed by starting our walk so early in the day. The next few hours were spent doing the visitor thing, going through dozens of shops full of postcards, manufactured figurines, Minnetonka moccasins and countless other items you would have begged your parents for when you were a kid.
Traditional ways of life are kept alive by the 250 artisans represented in the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc. Here I learned that the $5 pieces of pottery I had purchased decades ago in a shop miles from here were made by one the area’s most noted artisans, Louise Bigmeat Maney. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian uses modern technology—computer-generated images and audio effects—combined with artifacts to relate the tribe’s history dating from the Paleolithic Period.
Later in the afternoon we wandered over to the Oconaluftee Indian Village, a living history museum demonstrating and explaining what life was like before and after European immigrants began settling on Cherokee lands. The evening performance of the outdoor drama, “Unto These Hills,” was, to us, a vivid (and well-presented) depiction of how European settlement destroyed a traditional way of life that had existed for thousands of years.
Yes, it had already been a long day, but the full moon provided ample light to navigate the trail back to our car—and this time we saw a pair of elk.
When You Go
The Walk: An easy 1.5 mile walk beside the Oconaluftee River leads into Cherokee, for the opportunity to walk another 1.5-2.5 miles exploring the town. Double the mileage if you make this a round-trip walk.
Getting there: From the intersection of US 19 and US 441 in Cherokee, drive US 441 northward for 3.5 miles to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.
More information: A brief trail description and map are available on traillink.com/trail/oconaluftee-river-trail. Additional attraction information is on visitcherokeenc.com.
Find out more about Leonard’s walking and hiking adventures at habitualhiker.com.
The story above appears in our July/August 2019 issue. For more subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!