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Editorial in Hartford Courant

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  • In promoting a national park in the southern Appalachians, Chase Ambler wrote dozens of editorials and submitted them to newspapers and magazines throughout the east coast. After they were published, the Appalachian National Park Association often reprinted and circulated them as part of their promotional campaign. Chase P. Ambler (1865-1932) was a founding member and long-time secretary of the Appalachian National Park Association.
  • Will the Editor please use as much of this as he can. A copy of the paper giving such notice will be appreciated. C. P. Ambler, Asheville, N. C. Secretary. THE GREAT NATIONAL MOUNTAIN PARK. From The Hartford Courant. THE wildest and most naturally beautiful part of this country east of the Rocky mountains is that region where North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia approach each other. It is a mountain country with an average elevation of 4,000 feet and peaks running up to thousands of feet higher. The tallest mountain east of the Rockies is in North Carolina. . This wild region abounds in timber, and is still a natural and unbroken wilderness except as the lumbermen invade its quiet. They have come. Already traffic in forest land is on and the railroads of the vicinity are loaded with lumber for the market. Let the American people sit by with their accustomed optimistic apathy and before long the forests will be gone, the water courses left to dry up, the bears, deer and other wild animals killed off, and nothing but a fading memory remain of what now is a great natural park. JUL The general government ought to step in, before it is too late, and take possession of the whole region. The Yellowstone Park, far away, and to all but a few inaccessible, should be supplemented by this natural reservation, which is easily reached by the great majority of the people of the United States. Take your map and you will find that from Boston on the east around by Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis to New Orleans, Jacksonville and so on up to Washington every city on the imaginary circuit has railroad facilities bringing it within not more at most than one night's ride of Asheville, the central point in the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky country. Establish a park there and people from every large city this side of the Mississippi would be visiting it in large numbers at all seasons of the year. As an opportunity for conferring on the citizens of the country a means of great enjoyment this chance for congressional action is unique. But that really would be only an incident of the work. In this elevated land are multitudes of clear sweet streams, delivering water to the Atlantic coast and to the Mississippi river. The divide is in the possible park. If the timber is all stripped from these hills the streams will dry up and the ultimate loss will be serious and widespread. Leading citizens of North Carolina and other states adjoining have recently held a meeting and formed themselves into the Appalachian National Park Association to push the project. It ought to go without much pushing. All that is needed is to set people thinking about it. Look at what the government might do, and at what on the contrary will be done if the national government does not come in and protect nature there. Once done the mischief could never be undone. The loss would not be local but national. Everybody who fails to see the North Carolina mountains, suffers a direct loss, whether he knows it or not. Open the region to the whole country and let these sights be assured and available at all times, and the park would be one of the most popular resorts in the United States. Congress ought to jump at the chance to get possession of the great tract, at least 500,000 acres, said to be purchasable now at hardly more than nominal figures. The cost of a single battleship would give us this park, available for future generations as well as for ourselves. It is to be hoped the committee will set the work going early and carry it to the success that the American people will wish for it and for themselves.