Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Horace Kephart and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-11225.jp2
14 / 18
Item
  • 12 . leaders pledged undivided support to the Great Smokies project, which they gave to the fullest extent thereafter.30 Except for some of the loggers; they died hard. As late as 1931 a prominent timberland holder residing in Dillsboro was taking ads in the Asheville papers and writing public letters expressing these sentiments: "In the last century the good people of this community transported the Cherokees to Oklahoma to open up their land to settlement for their children's children. If it was a good thing to do then (sic), why deed it back to the government new?"3'1 The official birth of the park is considered by some to be the passage of the authorization bill in 1925. But leaders in the park fight continued on in years of intense effort marked by bitter frustrations and rewarding victories before the Smokies achieved the "limited park status" set forth in that bill. This occurred on February 6, 1930. Horace Kephart represented.Bryson City and Swain County at the Washington ceremony in which the deeds to 159,000 acres were turned over to the Department of Interior. . Although Kephart took little part in the political maneuverings and the bitter land acquisition suits which characterized the park movement during these intervening years, he continued to play an active role in the park development. With Kelly Bennett and Will Wiggins of Bryson City, he led Arno Cammerer, assistant director of the National Park Service, into the mountains, helping establish the long park boundary for Swain County.33 He spent a great amount of time working for the Nomenclature Committee to which he had been appointed by the North Carolina Park Commission. The committee was responsible for establishing the official names of all significant geographic points within the park on the Carolina side. This required considerable study of old maps, land titles, and other records.
Object