Tremont Visitor Center

Tremont Visitor Center is the public information and shop space inside the office building at Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, about four miles from the Townsend entrance. Stop for staff advice on local hikes, trail maps and guides, Smokies books, locally made goods and basic outdoor gear. It’s an Institute partner facility, separate from the park’s main National Park Service visitor centers.

The Institute describes Walker Valley as part of the Cherokee ancestral homeland. Will and Nancy Walker became the valley’s first European settlers in 1859; a logging railroad reached the valley in 1924, and Tremont was established as a logging town in 1926 where Lynn Camp and Thunderhead prongs meet. The last logs left through the valley in 1938, four years after the park’s establishment. The Institute’s education center began as a 1969 partnership between Maryville College and the National Park Service; it became an independent nonprofit in 2001.