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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

Fate linked two champions of the Smokies

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Item 1 - Fate linked two champions of the Smokies
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Fate linked two champions of the Smokies

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Item 2 - Fate linked two champions of the Smokies
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Fate linked two champions of the Smokies

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wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11207.jpg

Fate linked two champions of the Smokies

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Item’s are ‘child’ level descriptions to ‘parent’ objects, (e.g. one page of a whole book).

  • shots Bennett had captured with his camera. He became the first to hymn the praises of the Great Smokies to the world beyond the mountains, and they were soon calling him the "Psalmist of the Smokies." "My sylvan studio spread over mountain after mountain, seemingly without end," Kephart wrote, "and it was always clean and fragrant, always vital, growing new shapes of beauty from day to day. The vast trees met overhead like cathedral roofs. "I am not a very religious man; but often, when standing alone before my Maker in this house not made with hands, I bowed my head in reverence and thanked God for His gift of the great forest to one wno loved it." Kephart's was the voice that cried out from the depths of the Smokies that they should be set aside as a national park. And his words were words of prophecy. "The millions of people hived in cities have learned, he wrote in the early 1920s, "that it is a matter of self-preservation for them to have wingroom, every now and then, in the open air. They must have vacations out of doors. "And so we see them every summer speeding away from town in their cars, hundreds of thousands of cars, till the highways in every direction are j crowded with tourists seeking ! scenic routes and comfortable _ stopping places." This land he had discovered Kephart said, was the spot. "If one takes a map and a pair of dividers he will find that the Smokies are nearer the center of population than any other mountains except the comparatively meager ones of eastern Kentucky," Kephart said. "Is it not, then, strange and interesting fact that they remain to this day unknown to the world at large. No one has explored them, save a few hardy mountaineers. There are cliffs and gulfs in the Smokies that no man is known to have climbed. "The town of Bryson City, for j example, is less than 10 miles in i an air line from Clingman j Dome, center and apex of the Great Smoky range, and yet there are not three men in Bryson City today who have traveled the length of the Smoky divide. "There are thousands of j moving m atiu leveling ine forests of virgin timber. He saw sawmills spring up on every creek and logging railroads fan out to the very tops of] the Smokies. This wasn't what Kephart and Bennet wanted. And together they- joined others in a crusade to save the Smokies from the woodsman's ax and set them aside as a sanctuary. Bennett got up money and sent Kephart up to Washington to plead with government officials. The Secretary of the Interior proved sympathetic and delegated a commission to come down and look over the Smokies. "The folks who came down from Washington spent several weeks here," Bennett recalled. "Kephart and I and a woodsman named Bill Wiggins took them all over the Smokies. We hiked up Nolands Creek to Clingmans Dome where they could really see what the Smokies were like. In time, what with Kephart and Bennett flooding the country with stories and pictures about the Smokies, the Rockefeller family came up with a proposition to put up half the money needed for the purchase of a half million acres of Smokies land. The people of North Carolina and Tennessee chipped in with their pennies and ruckles and dimes to match Rockefeller dollar for dollar. , "The federal government," Bennett pointed out, "didn't put up one cent. The park lands were bought by the people of North Carolina and Tennessee and the Rockefeller family." Kephart didn't live to see his dream come true, to see the millions of people come traveling this way every year to gee his beloved Smokies. For he met tragic death in an automobile accident with Fiswoode Tarleton, a Georgia writer, near Bryson City in 1931. Before Kephart died they named a mountain in the Smokies for him. And after his death they bestowed upon him the title, "Father of the Great Smoky Park." But though he had lost his partner, Bennett'kept right on with his crusade and by 1934 the park was assured.- There is no monument to Kelly Bennett, but one day there will be. Just you wait and see.
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Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

This digital collection was created to contribute to the public's understanding of the forces and ideas that led to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934. The most vi...

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