File:Cades Cove tectonic window & Blue Ridge (Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, USA) 1.jpg

English: The Great Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border are dominated by forested mountains and hills. A major exception is the ~flat-floored landscape shown above - this is Cades Cove, which is a tectonic window (also known as a fenster). Erosion has breached the Great Smoky Thrust Fault, resulting in the exposure of non-metamorphosed, Paleozoic sedimentary rocks below the fault (outcrops of Ordovician Jonesboro Limestone are nearby here). The hills and mountains surrounding the fenster at left & in the far-background are part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province. The Blue Ridge in this area has bedrock consisting of Neoproterozoic-aged metasedimentary rocks above the Great Smoky Thrust Fault.

The Blue Ridge is one of three physiographic provinces that make up eastern America's Appalachian Mountains: the Valley & Ridge, the Blue Ridge, and the Piedmont. A couple of American national parks have been established in the most scenic stretches of the Blue Ridge: Great Smoky Mountains (see above) and Shenandoah. The Blue Ridge is mostly composed of Precambrian basement rocks (igneous & metamorphics). The mountains of the Blue Ridge are generally rounded and not very tall. This is unlike the tall, mostly sharp-peaked mountains of western America's Cordillera, the Andes of South America, the Alps of Europe, and the Himalayas of Asia. Compared with those geologically young mountain chains, the Blue Ridge is relatively old - the Appalachians have been subjected to long term erosion for about one-third of a billion years.

Locality: view from along Cades Cove Loop Road, Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, eastern Tennessee, USA