Smoky Mountain Woodcarvers Festival Returns to Townsend

The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center
Photo by Charles Pannell

For a celebration of Appalachian life, make plans to attend the 2010 Smoky Mountain Woodcarvers Festival. Slated for August 21-22, this annual event is held at the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center in Townsend, Tennessee.

The highlight of the weekend is the annual woodcarvers competition. The competition draws entrants from all over the region and features 19 categories. Carvings on display will include everything from animals, birds of prey and wood spirit faces to human caricatures, relief carvings and even walking sticks. The admission charge is a very reasonable $3, and it includes admission to all the exhibits in the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center.

The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center is located between the Townsend traffic light and the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Inside you'll find interpretive exhibits about the Native Americans and early settlers that inhabited the area, along with an interesting transportation gallery. Outside there is a collection of historic buildings which illustrate what it was like to live in an Appalachian community in the early 1900s. All in all, it's an excellent museum and a great primer on the rich cultural heritage of the Great Smoky Mountains.

There is good wheelchair-access through most of the museum, with plenty of accessible parking in front, level access to the museum, and barrier-free pathways through the galleries. Most of the historic buildings have a step or two at the entrance, but you can still peer inside the bulk of them. The paths around the buildings are level and covered in crushed gravel; and although there are a few ruts here and there, it’s doable for most folks.

For more information about the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center, visit www.gsmheritagecenter.org; and for more information about the Smoky Mountain Woodcarvers Festival, visit www.woodcarvers.com.

And if you want to learn about more accessible things to do in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, as well as find out about two wheelchair-accessible ridge top rental cabins, read the Summer 2010 issue of Emerging Horizons. It's a beautiful area of Tennessee to visit, with a lot of options for wheelchair-users and slow walkers.