Cherohala Skyway

The Cherohala Skyway Visitor Center at Tellico Plains, TN (225 Cherohala Skyway) — the western gateway, home of the Charles Hall Museum, and your last services before forty-three miles of mountain.

Boone Merrick here, glad to ride along. Now I'll tell you straight — I love this road, because for a stretch of pavement barely forty miles long, it carries more story than roads ten times its size. And unlike some pl…

Not far up from where you started, back near Tellico Plains, a side road turns off and runs up the Tellico River — and if you ever have an hour to spare on this drive, that little detour leads to one of the prettiest…

As you roll through these quiet stretches, keep your eyes moving, because these two national forests are full of wildlife and the Skyway's slow pace and open overlooks give you a real chance to see it. Black bears liv…

Take a moment to appreciate the sheer audacity of the road under your tires, because it should not really exist. The Cherohala Skyway took about thirty-six years to build and cost in the neighborhood of a hundred mill…

A recreation area and mountain lake in the Cherokee National Forest off the lower TN Skyway — and a name that marks an old line between two worlds.

Now here's the one I promised — the reason this whole impossible road exists. And it starts, of all places, at a little club meeting in Tellico Plains in the spring of nineteen fifty-eight. For generations, the folks…

The lower Skyway on the Tennessee side, climbing out of the Tellico River country into the Cherokee National Forest — the first big overlooks open here.

You should know you're driving a genuine legend among driving roads — not a local secret, but a bucket-list route that people cross the country to run. In twenty twenty-five the folks at Hagerty, the classic-car peopl…

Look around at this quiet river country you're driving through — because you're not on the edge of the Cherokee world here, friend. You're standing in the very middle of it. Or you were. This valley, the Little Tennes…

I've been telling you happy tales, so let me stop and tell you a hard one, because this beautiful road runs right alongside one of the saddest paths in American history, and you ought to know it. Long before any pave…

The high crest near the Tennessee–North Carolina state line at Stratton Gap — where the Cherokee National Forest hands off to the Nantahala, and the Skyway gets its name.

A few honest words about safety up here, because this high country is glorious and it is not to be trifled with. You're over a mile above sea level, and the mountain makes its own weather, fast. A clear blue morning i…

The dark red-spruce and fir forest along the crest — a cold-climate island stranded on the mountaintops since the Ice Age, more like Maine or Canada than the South.

A high North Carolina overlook near the state line, around 5,200 feet — huge layered views and a fine place to watch the weather move across the ranges.

At about 5,390 feet, the highest point on the Cherohala Skyway — fifty-mile views across the Nantahala and toward the Great Smoky Mountains. Pull all the way off.

Quinn told you the honest scientific truth about the balds — those strange grassy mountaintops nobody can fully explain. Now let me tell you the OTHER truth, the older one, the one the Cherokee told long before any sc…

A pullout near Hooper Bald (about 5,400 ft) — one of the strange grassy 'balds,' and the site of a bizarre 1910s wild-game preserve. A short trail reaches the open summit.

The pullout for Huckleberry Knob — at about 5,560 feet the highest peak in the area, an easy 2.5-mile round-trip walk to a grassy summit with 360-degree views (and a lonely grave).

All right, after all that heartache let me tell you the most gloriously ridiculous true story on this whole mountain — how a rich man's hunting fantasy loosed a plague of wild boar across the entire Southern Appalachi…

You passed the trail up Huckleberry Knob, the highest point around — a gentle, grassy, blueberry-covered dome with a heavenly view. And on top of that gentle mountain sits a lonely grave, and here is the cold story of…

The NC side dropping off the crest toward Robbinsville — spruce and hardwood, the picnic pullouts, and the long views down into the Nantahala.

Near Santeetlah Gap, where a side road leads to Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest — one of the last stands of old-growth cove hardwood in the East, named for the WWI poet.

The long blue reservoir below the NC descent — a Cheoah River lake ringed by national forest, near the Skyway's eastern foot.

Down at the end of your drive, in Robbinsville, there's a grave on a hill that every American ought to visit, because the man in it has a story that'll make your blood boil and break your heart in the same breath. His…

Quinn pointed you toward those ancient trees down the side road — the Joyce Kilmer forest, four-hundred-year-old giants that somehow escaped the saw. Let me tell you about the man they're named for, because it's a ten…

If there's a single best time to drive this road, most folks up here will tell you it's autumn — and this descent is one of the finest places in the whole East to watch the show. Because of all that elevation you've b…

I told you the Cherokee were removed from this country — marched west on the Trail of Tears out of these very valleys. And that's true. But it is not the whole truth, and the rest of it is one of the most stubborn, qu…

And there's Robbinsville coming up — the end of your ride, down off the crest and into the old Cherokee homeland. Boone Merrick here, and it's been a real pleasure telling you this mountain's tales the whole way over.…

Robbinsville, NC — the eastern gateway to the Skyway, seat of Graham County, home of Chief Junaluska's grave and the Snowbird Cherokee community. Fuel and food here; none for the next 43 miles.