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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

Kephart Collection back at Western (Carolina University)

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10994.jp2
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  • This short news article, “Kephart Collection Back at Western,” from the Smoky Mountain News reveals the disposition of the part of the Horace Kephart estate to Western Carolina University in 1973. A prolific writer, Horace Kephart (1862-1931) was noted naturalist, woodsman, journalist, and author and promoter of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
  • Kephart Collection Back At Western CULLOWHEE—The personal letters, journals, books and camping equipment of Horace Kephart, one of America's first environmentalists, are a- mong the items in a historic collection which has been returned to Western Carolina University, Owned by the university, the collection has been on loan to the National Park Service since 1948. Western Carolina now has a modern archives to house the items. Also returned were the personal papers and belongings of George Masa, a Japanese photographer who traveled with Kephart in the mountains of western North Carolina during the early 1900s. Born in 1862 in East Salem, Pa., Kephart was a great lover of the outdoors and leader in environmental protection. He was instrumental in founding both of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Boy Scouts of America. A mountain about two and one- half miles northeast of Newfound Gap was named for him. A resident of Asheville, Bryson City and Webster, Kephart attended Cornell University in !880 as a graduate student. He studied anthropology abroad in 1884 in Florence. The assistant to the librarian at Yale University from 1886 to 1890, he did extensive research on the subject of the American frontier before moving to the Great Smokies in 1904. While living in a log cabin in Bryson City, he wrote "Camping and Woodcraft." Kephart's copy of the book, with his personal notations, is in the WCU collection. He also wrote "Our Southern Highlanders" before his tragic death in a car crash near Bryson City in 1931. The Kephart collection includes 300 personal letters, 30 journals, 278 books, and several scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings about mountain life and Kephart's descriptions of mountain people he knew. Magazines with articles he wrote, an album with pictures of mountain people and places, and detailed maps of parts of the Great Smokies are also in the WCU Archives, along with Kephart's snow shoes, tent, sleeping bag, hunting knives, canteen, trunks, lantern and other outdoor equipment. Masa, who once operated a photography studio at 2 Church St. in Asheville, made many camping trips with Kephart. A mountain near Mount Kephart was named for him in the 1940's. The Masa collection contains elaborate scrapbooks, maps of Western North Carolina, Photographs, personal correspondence, 25 books, and aerial photographs of the mountains. Both collections are open for examination by researchers from 9 a.m. to'4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays in the WCU Archives. The collections are in the care of Dr. Richard W. Iobst, university

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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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wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10994.jp2