Cold Spring Knob

The Cherokee called this place Gadugi, meaning "where they help each other," a name that revealed how the narrow valleys between steep ridges forced cooperation among scattered families. When European settlers arrived in the early 1800s, they kept the cooperative spirit but lost the meaning, eventually calling it Snowbird after the Cherokee leader who had lived here when the mountains still belonged to his people.

The community sits at 2,106 feet elevation in a series of narrow valleys carved by Snowbird Creek and its tributaries as they cut through the ancient ridges of the [[rabbit:Unicoi Mountains]]. The terrain creates a landscape of pockets, each valley separated from the next by steep-sided ridges that rise