What began as a dark part of America’s history has become one of the more successful and scenic organized events, the annual Trail of Tears ride.

Named after the tragedy, the Trail of Tears involved the forcible relocation of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States using the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Many Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease and starvation en route to their destinations with a large number dying, including 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee.

The Annual Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride began in 1994 by Bill Cason to mark one of the trails used during the 1838 removal of Native Americans from their homelands in the Southeast to Oklahoma. The ride started at Ross’s Landing in Chattanooga, TN with eight riders and ended with 100 riders in Waterloo, AL. TOTRAI's ride has now grown to over 150,000 riders, making it the largest organized motorcycle ride in the world.

For the past 17 years, motorcyclists from across the southeast have come together to honor Native American Indians by taking a scenic ride across the northern Alabama region. This ride follows the footsteps of those who were forcibly removed from their homes by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

The removal included many members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, and Choctaw nations, among others in the United States, from their homelands to Indian Territory (eastern sections of the present-day state of Oklahoma). The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831.

Three detachments of Cherokee people were removed from their homelands to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) along the water routes, while 11 detachments made their way overland along existing roads. The routes are part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.

The ride follows Highway 41/72 from Chattanooga around Lookout Mountain. It cuts through Jasper and then follows Highway 41 to Monteagle, Tennessee, one of those most scenic and historic routes in the state. The ride ends up in Florence Alabama.

“This ride is not about which trail we ride, or the remembrance of one particular group of people that traveled the Trail of Tears,” TrailOfTears-Remembrance.org states. “It is about the remembrance of the plight of the Native American people ripped from their homes, their lands and forced to endure the terrible hardship placed upon them when forced to a new land, forced to a land full of uncertainty, unknowing, and a feeling that their aggressors may again change their mind and force another removal, or worse annihilation.”