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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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Item 1 - National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains
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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains

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

  • Smokies, that the Federal Government, if it took over the park would have to build not less than three hard-surfaced highways about fifty feet wide, across the Smokies from the Carolina border to the Tennessee border, connecting with state roads on either side, in order to accommodate the millions of tourists who would flock here as soon as the park was opened. These would be linked together by A SKY-LINE HIGHWAY running along the very crest of the Smoky divide for fortv miles. Most of this sky-line road would be 5,000 feet or more above sea-level. From it the motor tourists could look westward over the Appalachian Valley, on a clear day, a hundred miles in an air-line to the blue Cumberlands on the horizon. Then, turning to the eastward, they would behold a billowy sea of forested mountains, with here and there the glint of a river, but scarce any sign of settlement, forty or fifty miles to where the Blue Ridge meets the sky. This road would cross most of the capital peaks of the Smokies: Mt. Guyot, Mt. Collins, Clingman Dome, Siler's Bald, Brier Knob, Thunderhead, Gregory Bald, and other lookout points from which the vistas are sublime. Women and children and aged people, riding comfortably in their cars, could enjoy one of the most thrilling drives in all the world. Vast spaces lying between the roads would be only for human feet to wander in. Other places would be allotted to bridle-paths, of which there would be several hundred miles for horsemen. The Appalachian Scenic Highway, which will be mapped and logged in all the tourist guidebooks in the autumn of 1925, follows the Appalachian mountain system all the way from Canada to Georgia. Its link from Asheville to the Georgia line, via Waynesville, Sylva, Bryson City, Andrews and Murphy is our Highway No. 10. This route runs along the southern edge of the proposed park. Other highways leading to the park from every direction can be found on the map. The Forest of the Great Smokies A National Park in the mountains of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee would not duplicate anything in the western parks. The scenery is altogether different from any of them. It is typical of Appalachia at its best. For wild beauty and grandeur I have seen nothing in eastern America that equals the Smoky divide and its outlooks. Over a goodly part of the range the primitive forest still stands in all the majesty of many hundreds of years of growth. It is the most varied forest in the world today. There are 136 species of native trees and 174 species of wild shrubs. Under their shade grows a teeming variety of wild plants that can thrive nowhere but in a forest primeval; they perish forever as soon as the big old trees are felled, and lovers of plants and wild flowers will know them thereafter only as pictures in books or as dried specimens in a herbarium. Here stands today, in the Great Smoky Mountains, the last hundred square miles of uncut primeval forest, just as it stood, save for added growth, when Columbus discovered America. It will all be destroyed within ten or fifteen years if the Government does not take it over and THE TWINKLING FALLS
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).

  • Produced by the North Carolina Park Commission, this 20-page brochure was published in 1925. “A National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains” includes a few poems by various authors and a lengthy essay by Horace Kephart (1862-1931), author of “Camping and Woodcraft” (1906) and “Our Southern Highlanders” (1913). In his essay, Kephart argues for the establishment of a national park in the southeastern U.S., making a case for its placement to include the Great Smoky Mountains. Also included in the brochure are photographs of sites within the boundary of the proposed park. The photographs are attributed to the Smoky Mountain Conservation Association, based in Knoxville, Tennessee.

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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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