Welcome to Smokies Trails Forever
The $4 million Trails Forever endowment will fund an additional permanent trail maintenance work crew to support trail improvement projects along the 800+ miles of hiking trails inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Please help us reach our goal! We must raise $143,000 to meet our $2 million challenge from the Aslan Foundation of Knoxville.
Trails Forever is for ALL of the trails in the Smokies for ALL TIME.
In 2008 Friends of the Smokies received a challenge to match a $2 million grant from the Aslan Foundation of Knoxville. The Aslan Foundation is the legacy of avid Smokies hiker and founding Friends board member Lindsay Young. Because it is a $2 million pledge to be matched by Friends of the Smokies, Trails Forever is a unique opportunity for anyone who loves the Smokies to contribute to its lasting preservation.
Since 1997, the Aslan Foundation has given more than $240,000 to Friends of the Smokies to help preserve and protect Great Smoky Mountains National Park, plus $1.3 million to-date to establish the Trails Forever endowment. Read More...
Previously the foundation provided $5,000 for restoring historic log cabins in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and $170,000 to aid in the fight to save the Park’s hemlocks from the destructive hemlock woolly adelgid. The latter grant supported the expansion of a laboratory at the University of Tennessee where scientists rear insects that feed upon the hemlock wooly adelgid. Because of the Aslan Foundation’s great support, the facility was named the Lindsay Young Beneficial Insects Laboratory.
Following Mr. Young’s passing in 2006, the Aslan Foundation has continued to build upon his history of philanthropy. The Aslan Foundation board and the Young family feel confident that because of his love for the Smokies and the people of East Tennessee, Lindsay Young would feel proud that he established the Trails Forever endowment for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We are very grateful to the Aslan Foundation and the Young Family for establishing the Trails Forever endowment as a way to acknowledge Mr. Young’s love for the Smokies for all time. No legacy could be more deserving or more fitting.
We need your support to make Trails Forever a lasting success and an enduring legacy for both Lindsay Young and the 75th Anniversary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
To support Trails Forever, contact Development Director Sarah Weeks at 800-845-5665 or sarah@friendsofthesmokies.org. Donations can also be made here.