Great Smoky Mountains Association is pleased to announce that, beginning February 1, 2024, the organization will operate under a new name and brand identity: Smokies Life.

Founded in 1953, Great Smoky Mountains Association has a 70year history of supporting the preservation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Over the decades, the organization has thrived — and grown — having provided more than $50 million in direct aid to the park since its inception, operating a total of 11 visitor centers and contact stations, maintaining a roster of 29,000plus members and publishing a vast array of parkrelated books and multimedia.

One of four nonprofit partners to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the organization was originally founded under the name Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association. In 2002, the board of directors shortened the name to Great Smoky Mountains Association to better encompass its support for both cultural and natural history.

Today, Smokies Life is driven by the same vision that motivated the association’s founders: the desire to protect and preserve an ancient mountain range that supports more than 21,000 species of life and continues to carry deep cultural significance as the homeland of the Cherokee people as well as the home of African Americans and White settlers who lived here before the park’s creation in 1934.