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WCU - Great Smoky Mountains - A Park for America

National Parks Bulletin, 1925

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Item 1 - National Parks Bulletin, 1925
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National Parks Bulletin, 1925

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  • National Parks Bulletin First, the character of the national parks as areas of scenic importance outstanding among all other scenic areas of similar kind. Second, their condition of primitive nature, untouched except as necessary for administration and the comfort and convenience of visitors. Third, their exemption from industrial uses; and Fourth, the prohibition of their purchase out of Federal appropriations. National Parks' Own Definition of Themselves The first and second of these together constitute the definition of national parks which is on record in the construction of the parks themselves during a period of half a century. It applies with literalness to all except several small parks which Secretary Work purposes to eliminate, thus perfecting the System. This dual definition is, of course, the parks' greatest safeguard because of the scarcity of areas which consist of typical virgin forest combined with land features of exceptional scenic importance. With so many localities now anxious to acquire national parks, it is evident that the continued maintenance of every one of these safeguards is necessary to preserve the existing status of the entire National Parks System. We congratulate Secretary Work on his undertaking and pledge him our help for its fullest realization. The beginning of movements of this importance are well to follow, and all who want copies of Bulletin 45 to read or circulate have only to write for them. Order Out of Chaos Elsewhere in this number is an account of the Joint Committee on Recreational Survey of Federal Lands, which is listing and mapping the recreational opportunities in the lands of enormous area owned by the United States. Another committee is listing State parks, still another the country's playgrounds. These surveys are working under the authority of the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation, which, representative of nearly a hundred and fifty national organizations of the people and a committee of Cabinet heads, will base upon findings a nation-wide outdoor recreation plan. The era of outdoor recreation has rushed upon us with the speed of the automobile, which brought it, and there can be no denying its pace, its power and its permanence. It swept from east to west, and, rebounding a swollen flood, is overwhelming the east and south. It engulfed our National Parks, swept down our coasts, overran valleys and mountains, and now is invading desert and wilderness. Ungoverned and ungovernable, at least it can be directed. The General Conference on Outdoor Recreation is an evolution, nothing else, born of civilization's instinct for organization and control. One of the first fruits of this same instinct will be the installation of our National Parks System in its normal educational status. Proposed Great Smoky National Park In this number appears a description of the area within which will be selected the lands to make up the proposed Great Smoky National Park. More than six years ago the National Parks Association began to advocate adding to the System an area representing in highest expression the land forms and forests of the Appalachian Mountain System. Already the Cascade Mountains, the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the colossal Rocky Mountain Systems were represented there by national parks of surpassing gran deur which illustrated primitive land, animal and plant forms through a wide range of conditions. The high semi- arid plateaus of the southwest were similarly represented. But there was no representative among them of our oldest mountain system, the Appalachians, in whose fastnesses and under whose mighty deciduous forests began civilization's all-conquering war with the vast continental wilderness. The first settlers of America confronted nearly a million square miles of the richest and most varied forest the world probably ever produced. So sweeping has been the destruction of four centuries that finding primitive conditions combined with majesty of contour was bound to be a difficult problem in the East. At one time we wondered whether our Appalachian National Park, if discoverable at all, could exceed at most a hundred square miles. But in the Great Smoky Mountains the very height, steepness and unapproachableness of its lofty central uplift has preserved for today and posterity an area of primitive forest conditions two or three times that size. And, because of superior richness of soil and abundant moisture, this forest is as luxuriant and varied, probably, as any area of similar size in the unbroken forest which once covered nearly our entire east. What the National Parks Association Stands For During the last few weeks an informal committee of trustees has painstakingly revised the list of National Parks Association objectives, with the purpose of reaching an ultimate statement of the principles which affect our attitude toward the many problems of nature conservation which confront us. Our Objectives 1. To conserve nature and win all America to its appreciation and study. 2. To encourage use of the National Parks System for enjoyment of its unsurpassed spiritual and educational values. 3. To protect National Parks against whatever may tend to disturb their continuity of natural conditions or to diminish their effectiveness as supreme expressions of beauty and majesty in nature. 4. To promote use of National Parks for purposes of popular education and scientific investigation. 5. To promote a national recreational policy under which publicly owned lands of the nation shall be equipped for recreational service of the people so far as this is consistent with other requirements. 6. To protect wild birds, animals and plants, and conserve typical areas existing under primitive conditions. 7. To aid specialist organizations, and to interest organizations of many kinds and the people generally, in these objectives. Our Illustrations It has been often remarked that a photograph is worth a chapter of text—the accuracy of which depends on many things, including the photograph and the text. The illustrations accompanying this number of the National Parks Bulletin are contributions to the text story of the proposed Great Smoky National Park. Future numbers will also carry illustrations which have stories to tell, sometimes stories wholly their own, and sometimes in further elucidation of text. But it does not follow that every number will carry illustrations. Occasionally bulletins will need no illustrations. Occasionally useful pictures may not be available. The illustrated pages are intended for our members. The makeup is such that the text 'may be printed by itself for the use of organizations which need an aggregate of other thousands of copies for educational campaigning.
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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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