The creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park required the federal government to purchase over a thousand individually owned tracts of land. This time consuming process necessitated the survey of hundreds of tracts of land, both residential and commercial, and resulted in this collection of land owner tract maps. These plat maps detail the location and size of all land that was purchased by the federal government for the establishment of the national park. They provide a trove of genealogical and historic information.