A backcountry campsite refers to a remote, primitive site typically located far from developed or maintained campgrounds. These campsites are situated in wilderness areas, often requiring hikers, backpackers, or other outdoor enthusiasts to hike or travel significant distances to access them. Here are some defining features of backcountry campsites: As of February 2013, Great Smoky Mountains National Park requires a permit and advance reservations for all backcountry camping in the park. Before planning your backcountry trip, please read through important information about reservations and permits, regulations, bear safety, trail closures, and on our backcountry camping page. Questions: Please direct questions concerning backpacking trip planning to the Backcountry Information Office at 865-436-1297. Phone calls are the preferred method of contact. The information office is open for phone calls daily from 8:00 am until 5:00 pm (Eastern Time) and in-person service from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. In addition to answering your backpacking questions, the experienced backpackers in the Backcountry Information Office can provide you with tips to make your trip safe and enjoyable. Resources: The park has over 800 miles of trails offering hikers a wide range of scenery including spectacular mountain vistas, rushing streams and waterfalls, historic structures, and quiet groves of old-growth forest. You can download a park trail map to find the location of trails, backcountry shelters, and campsites in the park. In addition, Smokies Life sells a variety of hiking books, maps, and guides to help choose a hiking route and plan your backcountry trip. Smokies Life is a nonprofit organization that supports educational and scientific programs in the park. You can contact the Association online or by phone at 865-436-0120. Regulations: Backpackers and hikers are subject to all Backcountry Rules and Regulations. Failure to abide by park regulations may subject you to a fine under Title 36, Code of Federal Regulations. Maximum fine for each violation is $5,000 and/or 6 months in jail. Backcountry camping allows people to immerse themselves in nature, providing a chance to disconnect from everyday life, experience true wilderness, and test outdoor skills. It’s important to plan carefully, understand the local regulations, and ensure that you have the necessary equipment for a safe and responsible adventure.

Backcountry shelters are structures designed to provide protection and refuge for outdoor enthusiasts in remote areas, such as hikers, campers, climbers, and skiers. These shelters are essential for ensuring safety and comfort in harsh weather conditions or when venturing far from civilization. As of February 2013, Great Smoky Mountains National Park requires a permit and advance reservations for all backcountry camping in the park. Before planning your backcountry trip, please read through important information about reservations and permits, regulations, bear safety, trail closures, and more on our backcountry website. Please direct questions concerning backpacking trip planning to the Backcountry Information Office at 865-436-1297. Phone calls are the preferred method of contact. The information office is open for phone calls daily from 8:00 am until 5:00 pm (Eastern Time) and in-person service from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. In addition to answering your backpacking questions, the experienced backpackers in the Backcountry Information Office can provide you with tips to make your trip safe and enjoyable. Resources: The park has over 800 miles of trails offering hikers a wide range of scenery including spectacular mountain vistas, rushing streams and waterfalls, historic structures, and quiet groves of old-growth forest. You can download a park trail map to find the location of trails, backcountry shelters, and campsites in the park. In addition, Smokies Life sells a variety of hiking books, maps, and guides to help choose a hiking route and plan your backcountry trip. Smokies Life is a nonprofit organization that supports educational and scientific programs in the park. You can contact the Association online or by phone at 865-436-0120. Regulations: Backpackers and hikers are subject to all Backcountry Rules and Regulations. Failure to abide by park regulations may subject you to a fine under Title 36, Code of Federal Regulations. Maximum fine for each violation is $5,000 and/or 6 months in jail.

BEYOND DOUBT the most generally useful building in any park is a shelter, usually open but sometimes enclosed or enclosable, and then referred to as a recreation or community building, or a pavilion.It is admittedly no trivial task to achieve a desirable and unforced variety in such buildings within the confines of a moderate cost. This is true of other park structures, but it is more apparent of shelters because they are so universally existent in park areas. It is the almost invariable presence of at least one shelter, and often of several shelters, in every park that tends to make us especially and painfully aware of a spiritless monotony of design and execution. Exertion of effort to bring character to a shelter, such as will differentiate it from a thousand and one others, is all too rare; attainment of the objective, without bizarre result, still more rare. The attempt is worth all the creative effort expended; the successful accomplishment, truly worthy of praise.Because its purpose and use usually lead to its placement in the choicest of locations within the park, where it is natural to invite the park user to rest and contemplate a particularly beautiful prospect or setting, the shelter finds itself in the very center of a stage with a back-drop by the first Old Master. Its role is thus a difficult one, and is ill-played if rendered in the flippant slang or thin syncopated measures of the moment. Slapstick comedy technique is inappropriate; some dignity beyond passing fad or fashion is demanded of the shelter's stellar part.The essentials of a shelter include first of all overhead protection and a place to sit and rest. In size, shelters range from the very small and minor, in a simple rendering, to the large and complicated, when many extra-functional dependencies are included in the ambitious structures of a large, much-used park.Transition from the simplest to the specialized or more complex structure may be effected by the incorporation of one or more fireplaces, the partial or complete enclosing of the sides for protection from wind or weather, the provision of ovens or grills for picnic cooking and tables and seats for the picnic meal. The shelter of special purpose or the recreation building for year-round use results.

A scenic overlook (also called a viewpoint, vista point, or lookout) in a national park is a designated area—usually along a road, trail, or at a high elevation—where visitors can stop to admire and photograph a particularly beautiful or dramatic landscape.

A feature class depicting geographic locations of park trail heads which intersect public roads.

This is a vector polyline file showing trails at Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM). The data was collected using a Trimble Pro XR GPS receiver with a Trimble Compact Dome Antenna and a Trimble Asset Surveyor hand held data logger. The trail system a Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most important man-made recreational features of the Park. This dataset represents the most comprehensive inventory of both locational and attribute information about the trails systems to date and is considered on of the most important base data layers for the Park. As such GRSM staff will strive to the both spatial and attribute information stored within this dataset up to date in order to best reflect the current status of the trails system at the Park Only Trails that are shown on the official park visitor map and/or listed in the park maintenance system are contained in this dataset. Other trails, while known to the park to exist and clearly used for access to permenant features (e.g. cemeteries, overlooks), are not contained in this dataset due to the parks desire to ensure safety of visitors on park trails. These data are formated for use by park staff in the park 1:24,000-scale topographic map series, and are classified using the "FCSubtype" field, which classifies a trail segment based on primary use.

This is a vector polyline file showing trails at Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM). The data was collected using a Trimble Pro XR GPS receiver with a Trimble Compact Dome Antenna and a Trimble Asset Surveyor hand held data logger. The trail system a Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most important man-made recreational features of the Park. This dataset represents the most comprehensive inventory of both locational and attribute information about the trails systems to date and is considered on of the most important base data layers for the Park. As such GRSM staff will strive to the both spatial and attribute information stored within this dataset up to date in order to best reflect the current status of the trails system at the Park Only Trails that are shown on the official park visitor map and/or listed in the park maintenance system are contained in this dataset. Other trails, while known to the park to exist and clearly used for access to permanent features (e.g. cemeteries, overlooks), are not contained in this dataset due to the parks desire to ensure safety of visitors on park trails. These data are formatted for use by park staff in the park 1:24,000-scale topographic map series, and are classified using the "FCSubtype" field, which classifies a trail segment based on primary use.

This is a vector point file showing the backcountry shelters at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The majority of these data were collected using Trimble ProXR GPS unit. BEYOND DOUBT the most generally useful building in any park is a shelter, usually open but sometimes enclosed or enclosable, and then referred to as a recreation or community building, or a pavilion. It is admittedly no trivial task to achieve a desirable and unforced variety in such buildings within the confines of a moderate cost. This is true of other park structures, but it is more apparent of shelters because they are so universally existent in park areas. It is the almost invariable presence of at least one shelter, and often of several shelters, in every park that tends to make us especially and painfully aware of a spiritless monotony of design and execution. Exertion of effort to bring character to a shelter, such as will differentiate it from a thousand and one others, is all too rare; attainment of the objective, without bizarre result, still more rare. The attempt is worth all the creative effort expended; the successful accomplishment, truly worthy of praise. Because its purpose and use usually lead to its placement in the choicest of locations within the park, where it is natural to invite the park user to rest and contemplate a particularly beautiful prospect or setting, the shelter finds itself in the very center of a stage with a back-drop by the first Old Master. Its role is thus a difficult one, and is ill-played if rendered in the flippant slang or thin syncopated measures of the moment. Slapstick comedy technique is inappropriate; some dignity beyond passing fad or fashion is demanded of the shelter's stellar part. The essentials of a shelter include first of all overhead protection and a place to sit and rest. In size, shelters range from the very small and minor, in a simple rendering, to the large and complicated, when many extra-functional dependencies are included in the ambitious structures of a large, much-used park. Transition from the simplest to the specialized or more complex structure may be effected by the incorporation of one or more fireplaces, the partial or complete enclosing of the sides for protection from wind or weather, the provision of ovens or grills for picnic cooking and tables and seats for the picnic meal. The shelter of special purpose or the recreation building for year-round use results. There are colloquial departures in shelters and their functions that make for some well-defined varieties.

The Equestrian Facilities Location database contains information about physical and cultural geographic features of all types with Great Smoky Mountains National Park, current and historical, but not including roads and highways. The database holds the Federally recognized name of each feature and defines the feature location by state, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates. Other attributes include feature designations, feature classification, historical and descriptive information, and for some categories the geometric boundaries. To display the broad collection of Points of Interest within the park footprint. These data borrow from the GNIS names schema, yet are heavily modified to allow for the display of points of interest within the park of interest to the public. These data are authoritative data published by the National Park Service.

THESE POINTS of open air assembly and seating in parks range from the minor, represented by the campfire circle, sometimes termed a lecture circle or council ring, to the large and elaborate in the form of outdoor theater or amphitheater. The elementary expressions are to be found in many parks, while the more extensive developments are apt to occur in large parks appealing to more than local interest, or in metropolitan parks where local or civic interest is well defined. The locating of the intimate circle or ring is largely a matter of proximity to use-demand, as represented by a cabin or camp group, or other such point of concentration within the park. A small plot preferably generally level, but failing that, not too rugged or precipitous, is the only topographic requirement. The larger amphitheater, in its several varying manifestations, should on the other hand be located in a natural bowl wherever possible. Unless existing contours truly invite such development, a remoulding of them to create a natural effect is apt to require an amount of work disproportionate to the gain. If anything short of accomplishment of complete naturalness results from a remoulding of topography in creation of an amphitheater, the park area is burdened with a disfiguring scar that should be rigidly avoided.The minor campfire circle or ring is merely the provision of seating around the community campfire, where the evening hours may be passed with song and story in the warmth of good comradeship and the friendly fire. The campfire is the sole physical essential of this foregathering place in the open. It is often given a fixity of location by the building of seats around it, particularly if conditions of climate or insect life make sitting on the ground unadvisable. Such seating may be merely logs or some more sophisticated adaptation of them, or again may be boulders or masonry construction, where stone is the more abundant native material. But there are no fixed principles, no traditions to be pressed, beyond admonishing an attention to the claims of the immediate natural environment.The principles applicable to the creation of amphitheaters or outdoor theaters are numerous. Probably paramount are the considerations of sight lines and acoustics, here quite as important as for the enclosed auditorium. Many will at first thought regard acoustics as not of the problem, but these should not fail to appreciate that hills and mountains, water surfaces, woods and forests, deflect and echo sound in accordance with their own laws, no less than do man-made surroundings, and call for just as much study and advance consideration.It is important that the stage be to the east or north, so that the audience will not face the afternoon sun. A distant view as background for the stage platform is greatly to be desired, or better still a picturesque cliff as at Pine Mountain, in Kentucky. If these do not exist, a background of trees should be sought. The amphitheater should be encircled by trees, to screen it from view and provide all possible shade for the audience, and to act as barrier against the disturbing noises of other park activities.The outdoor stage is often merely a platform, the distant view or a near-by stand of trees serving as a backdrop. If these are lacking, or some required use of the stage demands it, an artificial background of rustic construction, or of planting, or a combination of the two is created. When the showing of motion pictures is an activity, the extent of the structural background will be dictated by the size of the picture screen. The screen should be removable in winter, should be recessed for some measure of protection, and supplemented with dark canvas curtains to be drawn over it when pictures are not being shown. Where dramatic entertainment is to be offered, some provision of dressing room space is necessary. The stage of the amphitheater, being the focal point, must be outstandingly representative of park character. No