"First published in 1992, this guidebook has served thousands who have explored the 650,000-acre Cherokee National Forest. Now in its third edition, the book has been expanded once again to cover numerous additional trails and the almost 20,000 acres of additional congressionally designated Wilderness in the decades since the second edition. Stretching across the Tennessee-North Carolina state line, the Cherokee National Forest includes much of the western slopes of the southern Appalachian Mountains, north and south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The area encompasses a tremendous diversity of wildlife, vegetation, and scenic vistas of high mountain peaks and beautiful creeks, waterfalls, and valleys. With over 840 trail miles and 226 trails described and mapped, the book provides specific directions for all the forest's current trails along with general information on wildlife, vegetation, and geology past and present, as well as a history of the forest's human inhabitants-including the political battles that have been waged to protect it"--