The America's National Parks Podcast is sponsored by L.L. Bean.

This year, L.L. Bean is joining up with the National Park Foundation,

the official non-profit partner of the National Park Service to help you find your happy place in an amazing system of more than 400 national parks including historic and cultural sites, monuments, preserves, lakeshores, and seashores

that dot the American landscape,

many of which you'll find just a short trip from home.

L.L. Bean is proud to be an official partner of the National Park Foundation.

Discover your perfect day in a park at find your park.com.

Ridge upon ridge of forest straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee,

where ancient mountains covered in pine, glow in purple, pink, and blue hues, as a smoky mist rises from their thick

cloak of green trees. World renowned for its diversity of plant and animal life.

This is also a place to explore what remains of southern Appalachian mountain culture.

This is America's most Southern Appalachian Mountain Culture.

This is America's most visited National Park, the Great Smoky Mountains.

On today's episode, the story of six sisters who lived off this great land all on their own.

Here's Abigail Treview. Before the region now encompassing the great smoky mountains,

before the arrival of European settlers,

the region now encompassing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

was part of the homeland of the Cherokees. The first wave of westward expansion in the newly formed United States saw frontier people pushing into and over the Appalachian Mountains.

As conflicts grew with the Native Americans protecting their right to live where they had lived for centuries,

President Andrew Jackson signed the 1830 Indian Removal Act, beginning the process that eventually resulted in the forced

removal of all Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to what is now Oklahoma.

As white settlers arrived, logging grew as a major industry in the area,

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