Great Smoky Mountains National Park

From about 1890 to around 1920 the mountains of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee were devastated by the logging industry.  Vast woodlands were clear cut leaving the soil loose and unprotected.  Fires consumed the scrap that was left and landslides where all too common.

The idea for a National Park did not come into being because the mountain land was beautiful.  No, the idea came because so much damage has been done it was hoped that such protection might allow the dear land to recover and heal.  Almost all of the vegetation and most of the wildlife in the Park is new growth and recovery over less than the last hundred years.

Efforts to raise money were taking place in the early years of the Great Depression.  After, with great difficulty, the people of North Carolina and Tennessee raised half of the needed money for the Park, fund raising stalled down.  Hopes were down until the Rockefeller Fund donated the other half in memory of Laura Spelman Rockefeller.  The only visible acknowledgement of this gift is on a plaque at Newfound Gap where President Franklin Roosevelt stood to dedicate the Park in 1940.

Perhaps the newest addition to the Park has been the reestablishment of the elk that had been natively present until hunted to extinction more than a hundred years ago.  In 2000-2001 elk were brought into the Park from The Land Between the Lakes in Western Kentucky and also from British Columbia.  The return has settled into such success that the elk in the Park and beyond have now passed determinate number.

A young elk having his breakfast.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is unique in many ways:  there are more species of trees in the Park than in all of Europe from Turkey to Ireland, and, there are more than thirty species of salamanders in the Park making it the salamander capital of the world.

The Park was also established with the charter provision that it always be open to the public free from any admission fee.  Knowing this, we can all take advantage over and over keeping it one of the most visited Parks in our national system.

This is why they are called the Smoky Mountains!