The Great 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, it is the most visited national park in the United States.

The name Smoky comes from the natural fog that often hangs over the range and presents as large smoke plumes from a distance. This fog is caused by the vegetation exhaling volatile organic compounds, chemicals that have a high vapor pressure and easily form vapors at normal temperature and pressure

This memorial in Newfound Gap commemorates the efforts of those who helped to establish the Smoky Mountains National Park, particularly the Rockefeller family who donated five of the twelve million needed to purchase the 520,000 acres of the park and the park was dedicated from this memorial by F. D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1940.

Great Smoky Mountains NP was a grand experiment because never before had a national park been created by buying private lands. Also, both North Carolina and Tennessee, with the support of many citizens purchased thousands of tracks of land and then donated them to the federal government.