Saturday June 13th launches the celebrations for the Great Smoky Mountains 75th Anniversary with an Outdoor Concert in Cades Cove by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra .

As the Great Smoky Mountains National Park celebrates its 75th Anniversary, the anniversary of one of America's most beautiful and majestic national treasures, we should all be aware that this particular national treasure came at a high cost, a renowned national park that almost never came into being. The cost was not only in financial value, but also the cost of persistent determination.

Read the Highlander's latest feature story "Jewel of the East." Learn how this great national park wasn't a favorite choice for the first national park in the Eastern United States. The people of these great mountains knew it was the right choice for many reasons, conservation being one of them...read on....