And It Became Land

Cherokee tradition tells that mud was carefully laid out on rocks and, when it was dry enough, Grandfather threw it into the water and it became land, while the buzzard's great wings formed big valleys when they went down and big mountains when they went up. In Genesis, God created heaven and earth, gathered the waters together, and let the dry land appear, calling the dry land Earth and the gathered waters seas. The earliest beginnings of the Great Smoky Mountains came during a time of drastic fluctuations of temperature and massive upheavals in the earth's crust, and the bedrock of the Appalachian chain was probably millions of years old when it was metamorphosed and partially melted in the first mountain-building phase.

North Carolina · United States