page_title: Hazel Creek (Great Smoky Mountains)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hazel Creek (Great Smoky Mountains) / History
caption_attribution_description: Backcountry Campsite 84 in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. This campsite is located at the confluence of Sugar Fork and Hazel Creek. A small Cherokee village or hunting camp was situated here before the arrival of the first Euro-American settlers in the mid-1800s. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, this was the town of Medlin.
context_page_description: Hazel Creek is a tributary stream of the Little Tennessee River in the southwestern Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. The creek's bottomlands were home to several pioneer Appalachian communities and logging towns before its incorporation into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hazel Creek is now a back country campsite and historical area.
context_section_description: The Cherokee were the first known permanent inhabitants of the Hazel Creek valley, although the valley was much more sparsely-populated than the Overhill settlements further down the Little Tennessee valley.  A small Cherokee village is known to have existed at the confluence of Sugar Fork and Hazel Creek, and at the time of the arrival of the first settlers, there were Cherokee families living in Possum Hollow.  According to local lore, an unmarked Cherokee grave is located near Proctor.
  A well-worn Cherokee trail connected Hazel Creek to Cades Cove on the Tennessee side of the Smokies.  The trail followed Shehan Branch, crossed the Pinnacle, and ascended Eagle Creek to Ekaneetlee Gap, a col just east of Gregory Bald at the crest, and descended into the cove.  From Cades Cove, the trail proceeded to Tuckaleechee Cove and the Overhill settlements.  Other less-used trails connected Hazel to Forney Creek on the other side of Welch Ridge to the east and the Tuckasegee River area around modern-day Bryson City.
caption: Campsite 84 at the confluence of Sugar Fork and Hazel Creek, once the site of a Cherokee hunting camp and later the town of Medlin
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