Cherokee Heritage Trails wind through the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia in the heart of Cherokee homelands that once encompassed more than 140,000 square miles. Cherokee people have lived here for thousands of years, and the trails lead to places of myth and legend, village sites, memorials, museums, and other places of significance in the Cherokee story. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has more than 13,000 members, many of whom live on or near the Qualla Boundary, tribal lands that include the town of Cherokee, North Carolina. Annual festivals and events at some sites offer opportunities to meet Cherokee storytellers, basket weavers, stone carvers, wood carvers, gospel singers, musicians, and other artists from the Eastern Band, as well as to sample traditional foods, watch Cherokee stickball games, and hear the Cherokee language. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina, owned and operated by tribal members, serves as the main interpretive center and presents an overview of Cherokee heritage and experience. Other starting points include the Junaluska Memorial and Museum in Robinsonville on the Snowbird Cherokee community and Junaluska, the Scottish Tartans Museum in Franklin on Cherokee Middle Towns locations and Scots-Cherokee relationships, the Cherokee County Historical Museum in Murphy on the Trail of Tears and the “leech place” of Cherokee lore, the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore on Sequoyah and the Overhill Cherokee towns, Red Clay State Historic Site on nineteenth-century Cherokee life and the removal of Cherokees from eastern Tennessee, and New Echota State Historic Site near Calhoun on the nineteenth-century Cherokee renaissance and removal.