A new award for a Smokies Life book honors a glimpse into the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Letters from the Smokies, a compilation of archived documents bringing new park land stories to life, has been named the Publication of the Year by the 2025 Public Lands Alliance Partnership Awards.
The PLA award is the second honor the book has received since its publication in 2023. It also won the 2024 Project Excellence Award from the East Tennessee Historical Society.
Written by park librarian–archivist Michael Aday with his wife Denise Aday, each chapter of the book centers on a specific document from the park’s archives, describing and contextualizing each document with a written interpretation woven together with additional records and photos.
“I was delighted and humbled when I was told my book won the Publication of the Year award,” Michael Aday said after receiving the public recognition at the annual PLA convention in Nevada in early February. “To me, it reaffirms the power of storytelling in connecting us to our public lands.”
Letters from the Smokies highlights a small selection of memorable historical materials preserved in the park archives at the Collections Preservation Center near Townsend, Tennessee—a collection that spans more than 230 years. The archive proved to be a wealth of information for the book, presenting an opportunity to make history salient and accessible for contemporary readers.
“I was constantly awed by the stories I found in the archives,” Aday states in the author notes of the book.
The PLA Partnership Awards program is designed to celebrate the best in public lands partnerships, recognizing individuals, organizations, publications, products, programs, and services that embody leading-edge achievements in the preservation of public lands and the enrichment of visitors.
The book makes the region’s tangled story tangible, immediate, and recognizably human. Flipping through the book is a step back in time to when correspondence and penmanship were important parts of American history and culture. Readers can 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.
Along with handwritten letters, the book includes other archival documents, such as an 1879 liquor license and a Civil War era pass issued to travel through Union territory. Of the many memorable pieces of history highlighted in the book, some lean toward humor in perspective. One piece of published correspondence pertains to a new idea in 1968 by park leaders about how to manage bears. Enraged locals wrote the park, suggesting in no uncertain terms that the area might be better vacated by its leaders: “Go away, leave, resign, vamoose, transfer, anything, just so you go, go, go,” signed “Two Native Sevier Countians.”
Letters from the Smokies was edited by Frances Figart and designed by Karen Key, both of Smokies Life. The book is available in all bookstores at park visitor centers and online at SmokiesLife.org. All book proceeds go to the park to support projects and services.
The Great Smokies Welcome Center is located on U.S. 321 in Townsend, TN, 2 miles from the west entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Visitors can get information about things to see and do in and around the national park and shop from a wide selection of books, gifts, and other Smokies merchandise. Daily, weekly, and annual parking tags for the national park are also available.
