Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Tramping in the Great Smokies

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  • hundred thousand acres of virgin forests, the largest pieces. To both functions the Great Smoky area will hardwood forests left in eastern America. add importantly since it will represent Appalachian The Great Smokies are the friendliest mountains in land forms and primitive forests in their highest splen- the world. Their wild and untamed beauty enchants dor and perfection." There seems to be much misunder- and allures. They are high mountains as measured from their base level of fifteen hundred feet, as high above the surrounding country as many of our western peaks, measured from a base level of from four to nine thousand feet. Yet the Great Smokies, unlike the other high mountains of the world, are timbered to the top. This is their great charm. For five days and four nights I camped on top of the Great Smoky Divide, walking from one high peak to another, camping when night overtook me under the lee of some high rock peak or in a park-like grove of beeches, carpeted with moss, ferns and myriads of wild flowers. My bed was the luxuriant grass of a "bald", or fragrant balsam boughs. The sky was my roof. Blankets and a camp fire at my feet were welcomed even in August on top of Smoky. This is not surprising when one remembers that for twenty-eight miles the central ridge rises a mile or more above sea level. This is the land destined to become our twenty-second National Park, our greatest National Park in the East both in extent and grandeur. Robert Sterling Yard writing in the National Parks Bulletin says: "Great Smoky's contribution to the nation's world- famous exhibit will be large. The fundamental purpose of the National Parks system is two-fold; THE HARDWOODS REACH THEIR GREATEST GROWTH AND LUXURIANCE ON THE WELL- WATERED SLOPES OF THE GREAT SMOKIES. THERE ARE YELLOW POPLARS GROWING, TALL AND STRAIGHT, EIGHTY FEET TO THE FIRST LIMB AND TWENTY-FIVE FEET IN CIRCUMFERENCE standing in regard to the National Park situation. By an act of May, 1926, 70-W 000 acres lying partly in Tennessee and partly in North Carolina were designated as a suitable park site. This land is privately owned and must be privately purchased as the govern- men buys no land for National Park purposes. With funds raised in state campaigns the work of buying up this land when and where it could be obtained at a reasonable price has been going on. The Carolina and Tennessee legislatures have passed bills appropriating two million dollars each for the purchase of park lands. When as much as 428,- 000 acres have been acquired and approved by the Park Commission and National Park Service and officially accepted by the Secretary of the Interior a great National Park in the East will be an accomplished fact. Most of our National Parks have been created out of the public domain and are the nation's gifts to the people. If the Great Smokies become our next National Park they will be the people's gift to the nation, a wonderful gift that millions may enjoy, instead of the hundreds that have found this natural wonderland. Scientists have proclaimed this a geologist's laboratory, a naturalist's paradise. Here the student of geology can see evidences of it is at the same time our national museum system of erosion, change of land levels and faulting not found the untouched American wilderness in all its mani- elsewhere, for no other region shows so many different festations, and our national gallery of scenic master- phases of geological work and change.
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