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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

Kephart early park backer

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  • This 1978 article by Herma Cate is about Horace Kephart (1862-1931), a noted naturalist, woodsman, journalist, and author. In 1904, he left his work as a librarian in St. Louis and permanently moved to western North Carolina. His popular book, “Camping and Woodcraft” was first published 1906; the 1916/1917 edition is considered a standard manual for campers after almost a century of use. Living and working in a cabin on Hazel Creek in Swain County, Kephart began to document life in the Great Smoky Mountains, producing “Our Southern Highlanders” in 1913. Throughout his life, Kephart wrote many articles supporting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
  • Kephart early park backer Horace Kephart is one of the first authors who presented an authentic look at natives of the remote areas in Appalachia. But to dismiss him with only this awareness of his accomplishments is to omit much of the significance of his years among the people of Medlin N. C. - a settlement on the Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek - and several more years in Bryson City. Kephart's arrival here in 1904 was an unimpressive event. He alighted from toe train at Bushnell looking ill and staring blankly into space. The man who came to escort him sixteen miles deeper into the mountains had brought a mule for him, but Kephart was scarcely able to cling to the saddlehorn because of toe deep hangover which had become a way of life for him. Once sobered up and on his way back to a normal life, this 42-year old man found himself on "toe frontier of time" with which he had been fascinated for years. He had often longed "to pick up toe thread of history and historical writing" and complete toe accounts of pioneer life as told in Francis Park- man's "Oregon Trail" and Theodore Roosevelt's ^'Winning Of The West". But somewhere along the way too much frustration had intruded. The son of a minister of the United Brethern Church, Horace Kephart was born in Pennsylvania, but the family moved to Iowa when he was five. Young Horace received extensive formal education, then became a librarian in St. Louis. From St Louis he fled to a life much like that of Daniel Boone. The healing balm of mountain solitude, of association with unsophisticated people who came to trust him as one of their own, and of an opportunity to listen to toe vernacular of these mountain people as they spun their yarns or told plain facts about their stark lives — all these helped Horace Kephart regain a sense of worth. He also found time to write "Camping and Woodcraft," which has been called "an American classic of the outdoors," as well as many articles for nature magazines. Although Kephart moved to Bryson City in 1907, he continued fishing and camping in toe deep woods of toe Smokies. The longer he stayed in these woods, toe greater his desire to preserve them. "I got my health back in these mountains, he told his friends, "and intend to stay here as long as I live, and I want them preserved that others may profit as I have." No matter how often he went into the mountains, he as always impressed by their beauty and sensitive to their charm. Pausing one evening at a herder's cabin on Siler Meadows, he stood silently absorbing the beauty of the sunset and the tranquility of the approaching twilight. From far below he heard toe plaintive whistle of a logging train threading its tortuous way along Little River. Li a sudden outburst he declared, "The government should take it over and keep it as a national park." From that day forward he wroted article after article, hoping the government would intervene before all that majestic forest of virgin timber had been destroyed. In an impassioned plea he wrote in toe Asheville Times, July 19, 1925, "Here stand today, in toe Great Smoky Mountains, toe last hundred square miles of primeval forest, toe most varied and thrifty forest in toe world just as it stood, save for added growth, when Columbus discovered America. It wiU all be destroyed in ten or fifteen years if toe Government does not take it over and preserve it intact so that future generations may see what a genuine forest wilderness is like." Saddened by the destruction left in the wake of lumber companies, he recalled that when he first arrived in toe Smokies, his "sylvan studio" was By Herma Cate "always clean and fragrant, always vital, growing new shapes of beauty from day to day. The vast trees met overhead like cathedral roofs." Ironically, Kephart was killed in a car accident near Bryson City only months before representatives of Tennessee and North Carolina went to Washington to present a deed for 138,843 acres to become part of toe Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In his acceptance speech, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur recognized that this deed represented efforts by many men and women. Then he added, "I am sure you will join me in appreciation of the persistent and idealistic interest of Mr. Kephart, who not only knew these mountains and loved the people, but saw in them a great national resource."

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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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