An Honorable Hike

Briana Roberts was the first to reach Burton Ogle Cemetery. She wandered into the mossy clearing nestled in the heart of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and wound her way through the leaning, gray headstones. When she came to the grave of a fellow Army veteran, Roberts paused before speaking his name, L. Samuel Huskey. She sketched out his life from his birth in 1877 to his death, 55 years later. Then, she crouched down and leaned a balsam fir wreath, topped by a red ribbon, against the headstone. Stepping back, Roberts saluted.

Nearby, a handful of other volunteers searched for four other veterans they’d come to honor. They weren’t the only ones traipsing through park cemeteries that overcast December day. Several dozen people had turned up for the fifth annual wreath-laying event and were, at that very moment, spread out among the Appalachian park’s hills and hollows, 22-inch wreaths in tow.

[SPRING 2025] An Honorable Hike Marker

The grave of Civil War veteran Bazel (“Bas”) Shaw in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

VHSF 2021

The practice of adorning veterans’ headstones has gained popularity thanks to the nonprofit Wreaths Across America. What began as a Maine wreath-maker’s humble offering to an overlooked section of Arlington National Cemetery in 1992 eventually grew to an effort that reached more than 4,600 cemeteries last year. The event at Great Smoky Mountains was organized by Veterans Heritage Site Foundation, a Tennessee-based group formed by Marilyn Childress and Jessica Hodge in 2016. Unlike other wreath-laying activities, which might take place at a military park or a neighborhood cemetery, the Great Smoky Mountains event requires participants to lace up their hiking shoes to reach the nearly 250 veterans buried within the park. The hikes to reach these graves vary from a leisurely stroll to the cemetery behind Cades Cove Primitive Baptist Church to an off-trail, uphill scramble to reach the resting place of Civil War veteran Jonas Jenkins. The most strenuous is the roughly 16-mile round trip to Bone Valley, where seven veterans are buried.

Childress’ work in Great Smoky Mountains started in 2020 when she realized the park, home to some 170 cemeteries, didn’t have a wreath-laying event of its own. She soon learned why: There was no record of all the service members interred across the park’s 522,000 acres. So, the former Navy hospital corpsman began collaborating with genealogists and historians to research local families. As of February, Childress’ foundation had confirmed the existence of 249 graves belonging to veterans who had served in a range of conflicts, including the Revolutionary and Vietnam wars.

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Each year, Childress keeps the memory of the park’s veterans alive by encouraging those gathered to voice the names of the deceased when they lay their wreaths. Veterans die twice, she said: “Once when they physically pass away, and once when their name is never said again.”

Back at the Burton Ogle Cemetery, a roughly 2-mile hike from Sugarlands Visitor Center, Roberts surveyed the forest of bare trees backstopped by ancient mountains. She thought of her family’s veterans — her great-grandfather, grandfather and father — and of her brother, currently stationed overseas with the Army. She looked at the weathered marker atop Huskey’s grave. “This is somebody’s son, their brother, their uncle,” she said. “And it’s just a great honor to be able to remember them.”