Karen Spears Zacharias was 40 years old when she published her first book, but the seed that swelled into her latent identity as a writer was planted decades earlier, in the summer of 1966. After her father died in the Vietnam War, Zacharias, then nine years old, was sent to Tennessee to stay “in the way back holler of a place called Christian Bend” with
The four-state mountain region that includes Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to an estimated 14,500 black bears, but one particular animal had caught the attention of a watchful police chief in one of the park’s gateway communities. The bear hadn’t hurt or threatened anybody—yet—but it kept getting into things it shouldn’t, and efforts to encourage residents to secure attractants like garbage, bird seed,
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.
