Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Guyot's geographic notes on the southern Appalachians

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10767.jpg
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  • -8- extrene height of the Mountain*" Thereafter he mentions the range once as "the main Smokey or Iron Mountain," onoe again as Smokey I'ts.," and onoe as "the Big Smokies Mountain." In no instance does he HLve a distinct name to any peak or ridge* So far, then, as present-day research has gone, it may be stated that the Great Smoky 'fountains, in common with other segnents of the Dhaka or western escarpment of the Southern Appalachian system, had no officially recognized name of its own(nor even, so far as known, a local one) until shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolution. The whole chain, from Virginia to Georgia, was simply the Appalachian Mountains, or, on one or two maps, the Alleghany Mountains. through the revolutionary period and on down to the nineteenth century, the Smokies were generally called the Great Iron Mountain, in common with other segments to the northeastward. The term Smoky, as an alternative to Great Iron, first occurs in xSSft 1789. It gradually tended to supplant the older name, though the latter continued in more or less use until at least 1821. This is only a familiar example of the changing and often extremely confusing place-names in American geography, which have caused so muoh trouble that finally, in recent years, the difficulty wasevept away by the creation of a TMlted States Geographic Board, composed of men from ths several executive departments of the Federal Government, and a few other public officials, who were empowered to settle all disputed matters of nomenclature, and give new names to natural features, where needed, throughout ths United States and its possessions. The decisions of this board are final.
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