Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Great Smoky Mountains National Park / Land of the Everlasting Hills

items 60 of 84 items
  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-5372.jpg
Item
?

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

  • Mldirtq.CMftr^defXatireStoM Pi Beta ?! " GATLINBURG .TEHNEXJ-EE. mm lilii^iiiPl T Z"".:-<' X ■■"■;;';■■'.';' % :y-,. mXXXXXX }:.y\-.XX"+ .--'.---•- PI BETA PHI SETTLEMENT SCHOOL, GATLINBURG, TENNESSEE Educating the Boys and Girls of the Smokies ORGANIZED as a memorial to its founders, Pi Beta Phi Settlement School was opened on February 12, 1912, with one teacher and thirteen pupils, at Gatlinburg, which at that time was a remote mountain settlement, but is now at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. From this small beginning the school has developed into an educational and social center for the benefit of the young people of the mountains, and there are now 150 pupils in the ten grades. Courses are also given in agriculture, home economics, weaving and home hygiene. Community classes in agriculture, home economics, and weaving are conducted, with enrollments larger than in the regular day school. A graduate nurse and a very competent local assistant are in the health center. Through all these activities practically every family for miles around is touched. Home industries have been revived through the teaching of weaving in the homes. The school is the market for weaving, furniture and basket making. As much as $20,000.00 cash for these products has been paid to community families in one year, making many of them self-supporting. Furniture making and refinishing antiques has been added to the industrial work. Alumnae clubs of the fraternity throughout the country and one in Canada are the principal markets for the Arrow Craft products, but the large number of tourists visiting the Park patronize the gift shop at the school very liberally. The school owns about 100 acres of land, about thirty of which are suitable for cultivation. Buildings consist of three cottages for teachers and girls (another being rented for the boys' dormitory), the Arrow Craft gift shop, a small hospital, the old school building and a new industrial high school building. A modern barn provides shelter for the school livestock and poultry. The dormitory boys and girls do much of the house work and care for the farm and stock, in this way earning the greater part of their expenses. An extension school in the Sugarlands, further back in the mountains, is doing much the same character of work as that of the parent school at Gatlinburg.
Object
?

Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).