Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Smokies: Peers of the Eastern Ranges in Nature

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  • ROBED WITH GLITTERING BEAUTY BY WINTER SNOWS The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is about to be a reality: the dream of Tennessee and North Carolina is to come true. .Yearly all, if not all, the money needed to purchase the four hundred and twenty seven thousand acres which will create the park is available, thanks to the five million dollar donation of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, to the equivalent of two million dollar contributions by the respective state legislatures, and generous popular subscriptions. As soon as negotiations can be completed with the six or seven lumber companies owning most of the holdings, these virgin forests and rugged valleys will belong to the nation, from all parts of which citizens will come to enjoy a new wildness and an unusual beauty,—come to be explorers in America's newest, and oldest, hills. are not jagged rocks and bare gaunt summits, but only warm, rolling hills. The guide told us of some of the beauties hidden away among the foliage,—of Abrams and Bridal Veil and Rainbow Falls, of Huggins' Hell, and of Alum Cave Bluff, which overhangs, threatening, the sitle of Mt. LeConte, and where, if one is quiet, a raven may appear, or perhaps a pair of golden eagles. As we journeyed through the growing day, we learned the past ol" these southern out-croppings of the Appalachian chain. The Smokies, our friend said, are among the oldest of American mountains. They were old when the western Rockies were just rising from the water; the Alps and the Pyrenees are children compared to them. The hardwood forests of America embraced these disintegrating hills in days when they reared even greater bulks. As aeons passed greater and greater varieties of flowers and trees sprang up, making the region a botanist's paradise. Until a few years ago, he said, these ranges were considered liabilities,— barriers which kept the commerce of North Carolina and Tennessee apart. The)- were little known, imj)en- etrable. Now they are assets. New roads are being built through them. Those who take their Nature from a car may circle tin- base of the mountains through Maryville and Gatlinburg in all comfort, and soon will be able to take the now partially completed highway through picturesque New a forest glen Found Gap from Knoxville to Here the whispering of hem- o i tlt ,1 r> v a locks and the bustling of a brook, Smokemont, North Carolina. A here the peace of the hiiis 365
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).