Tsali Recreation Area

Take your family mountain biking in Tsali Recreation Area with an America Outdoors outfitter!

Challenging - - that's the best word to describe the 39 miles of Tsali Trails, rated as "more difficult." Suited for hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders, the 4-loop system offers a variety of landscapes. You can climb 1-foot wide rugged paths or travel flat, well-beaten roads. The four trails -- Right Loop Trail, Left Loop Trail, Mouse Branch Loop Trail, and Thompson Loop Trail -- meander through mixed pine and hardwoods on a peninsula stretching into Fontana Lake.

The Tsali Recreation Area is named for a Cherokee man who hid in this area in 1838. The U.S. Government has ordered the Cherokees to move to Oklahoma -- a tragic removal that's known as "The Trail of Tears". Exasperated by the brutality to his family, Tsali and others escaped to these mountains.

Tsali was coaxed to surrender by a promise to allow the others to remain in the area. Tsali voluntarily came forward as a sacrifice for his people. As a result, he, his brother, and two older sons were shot and killed.

Today the Eastern Band of the Cherokee live on ancestral Cherokee land about 12 air miles east of the Tsali Recreation Area.