Welcome to the Friends of the Cumberland Trail site!

Welcome to the Friends of the Cumberland Trail, Inc., a group of folks interested in supporting Tennessee’s 300-mile hiking trail, threading through state park lands, natural areas, National Parks, historic sites, and Wildlife Management Areas, from Cumberland Gap to Chattanooga. We are hikers and housewives, students and senior citizens, businessmen and birdwatchers, physicians and farmers, musicians and historians, writers and river paddlers. But what we all have in common is the desire to preserve our rich Cumberland Mountain heritage and to share these stories through the Cumberland Trail. Friends of the Cumberland Trail is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

The Cumberland Trail is making history and you can be part of it. Never before has a “State Park – State Trail” been created by a partnership between volunteers and state government. The Cumberland Trail project has benefited from contributions of volunteer time and private donations of property and funding at historic levels. It’s the only park in the nation with its own weekly radio broadcast – a 30-minute interpretive music festival presenting the wonderful voices of our neighbors. Many other “firsts” can be accomplished by the Cumberland Trail with your help. The Cumberland Trail needs you.

Imagine a foot trail traversing the mountain tops, river gorges, meadows, and valleys of the Cumberland Plateau through 11 East Tennessee counties. Consider the rich history, the musical heritage, the thousands of plants, trees, and creatures unique to the Cumberland Plateau, and the need to preserve, protect these resources and to educate Tennesseans and visitors, and you can begin to understand the breadth of this project.

There’s a LOT to do. We want the Cumberland Trail to be a household name in communities throughout Tennessee-a park that is used, maintained, promoted, and cherished by its communities and visitors.