Blue Ridge National Heritage Area

The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area encompasses the mountains of North Carolina and includes the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The region’s distinctive landscape contains eastern America’s tallest mountain and deepest gorge. The original inhabitants of the North Carolina mountains, the Cherokee are now experiencing a cultural renaissance and renewed interest in their history, language, and culture. Building on age-old craft traditions of the Cherokee, Scots-Irish, and other immigrant cultures – traditions that have been nurtured by prominent craft schools and guilds established in the last century – the North Carolina mountains have become the country’s center for handmade crafts.