It’s time again for the longest-lasting Spring tradition in Tennessee Smokies history: the Gatlinburg Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage for 2025 returns again on April 23rd and lasts through April 26th!
From Gatlinburg.com:
“The 75th Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage is an annual four-day event in Great Smoky Mountains National Park consisting of a variety of wildflower, fauna, and natural history walks, motorcades, photographic tours, art classes, and indoor seminars. Most programs are outdoors in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, while indoor offerings are held in various venues throughout Gatlinburg, TN.
This event features professionally-guided walks, exhibits, and other learning opportunities to explore the region’s rich natural and cultural resources with over 200 educational hikes on topics like wildflowers, birds, salamanders, fungi, geology and more. Pilgrims from more than 40 states and several countries make the pilgrimage each year to learn more about fungi, ferns, wildflowers, trees and shrubs, medicinal plants, insects (terrestrial and aquatic), salamanders and snakes, birds, mammals (bats to bears), journaling, art and photography, and park history.”
Additional info from their official website offers:
“Throughout the long history of the Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (SWFP GSMNP), the underlying mission and philosophy has simply been to bring people together to fellowship, form connections, bonds, and friendships through a common interest focused on spreading curiosity, knowledge, appreciation, and education of natural history, biology, ecology, conservation, and land management.
Our programming is extensive and biologically diverse
Since 1951, this annual event in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has featured professionally-guided walks, exhibits, and other learning opportunities to explore the region’s rich natural and cultural resources. In recent times, more than 900 pilgrims from more than 35 states and several countries joined us. Our programs include fungi, ferns, wildflowers, trees and shrubs, medicinal plants, insects (terrestrial and aquatic), salamanders and snakes, birds, mammals (bats to bears), journaling, art and photography, and park history. For more information on what hikes we offer, take a look at our example program on the home page.
The SWFP is an annual nonprofit event featuring professionally-guided walks, exhibits, and other learning opportunities to explore the region’s rich natural and cultural resources. Pilgrims from more than 40 states and several countries make the pilgrimage each year to learn more about fungi, ferns, wildflowers, trees and shrubs, medicinal plants, insects (terrestrial and aquatic), salamanders and snakes, birds, mammals (bats to bears), journaling, art and photography, and park history.”
See these events at https://www.gatlinburg.com/event/spring-wildflower-pilgrimage/45/ and https://www.wildflowerpilgrimage.org.
