A Gift for All Time: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
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A Gift for All Time Great Smoky Mountains National Park Administrative History Theodore Catton Environmental History Workshop Final Report October 10, 2008 Prepared for Great Smoky Mountains Association and Great Smoky Mountains National Park 115 Park Headquarters Road Gatlinburg, TN 37738 Table of Contents Abbreviations used in Footnotes ii Map iii Introduction 1 1. Mountain Home 5 2. The Campaign to Establish a Park 19 3. The Campaign to Establish a Land Base 36 4. Building the Park: The CCC Era 58 5. Building the Park: The Mission 66 Era 80 6. An Impasse Over Wilderness 98 7. Planning and Development in the Environmental Decade 120 8. Managing Growth, 1982 to the Present 134 9. Visitor Protection 149 10. Concessions and Backcountry Management 168 11. Forest Protection 186 12. Wildlife Management 202 13 Fisheries Management 221 14. Biological Monitoring 233 15. Preserving the Mountain Culture: Founding Years 249 16. The Interpretive Program 261 17. Cades Cove 278 18. The Legacy of Dispossession 291 19. The Cherokee 310 20. Partners Old and New 324 Conclusion 334 Photographs 336 Appendix 1: Legislative Acts 355 Appendix 2: Administrators 376 Appendix 3: Annual Park Visitation 378 Appendix 4: Partners 379 Bibliography 380 i Abbreviations used in Footnotes CCF = Central Classified Files DSC = Denver Service Center GRSM = Great Smoky Mountains National Park GSMCA = Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association NA II = National Archives II NASER = National Archives – Southeast Region NCSA = North Carolina State Archives RG = Record Group WCU = Western Carolina University ii iii Introduction Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a place of majestic mountain views, delightful waterfalls and tumbling streams, and wondrous biological diversity. The park is habitat for 150 different species of trees, 60 species of mammals, 200 species of birds, and some 1,500 species of flowering plants. The area’s warm southern latitude, humid mountain climate, and variations in elevation combine to make it a rich tapestry of ecotypes and microenvironments. Nearly one- fourth of the park’s forested area has never been commercially logged, and the park’s natural zone, which is managed as de facto wilderness as defined by the Wilderness Act, covers more than 460,000 acres, making it one of the largest wilderness areas in the eastern United States. The park’s outstanding interest to science is recognized by its designation as both an International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site. The park also features one of the nation’s largest collections of rustic buildings. Some of these buildings were long ago dismantled, moved, and reconstructed in new locations. Others still stand in their original settings. Log cabins and barns, grist mills, churches, and isolated cemeteries serve to remind the park visitor that this landscape was once home to a considerable population of mountain farm families. These cultural features form historical enclaves within what is predominantly a natural park. People come to Great Smoky Mountains National Park at all times of year to sightsee, hike, camp, fish, ride horseback, backpack, and learn about nature. The summer months are the most popular time to visit the park, while the height of fall color brings a late surge of visitors to the Smokies before the relative calm of winter sets in. Receiving nine to ten million visitors annually, this is the most popular national park in the system. Much of the park’s phenomenal popularity stems from its central location in the eastern United States. It is roughly equidistant from the Atlantic Seaboard, the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River Valley, and the Great Lakes Region. With the help of an interstate highway system that effectively shrinks travel distances, the park is said to be within a day’s drive of one-third of the nation’s population. Meanwhile, the park receives a large amount of use from the growing population located just one to two hours away. This more proximate geographic area includes East Tennessee and Western North Carolina as well as Atlanta, Georgia. The park’s eastern character is a major theme in this administrative history. Heavy visitation is just one of several features of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that set it apart from national parks in the western states. As only the second national park established east of the Mississippi River (after Acadia) it was the first big national park to be made from private lands. Unlike most western national parks, which were carved from vacant public domain or national 1 forest lands, this national park had to be purchased entirely from private landowners. It required a complicated and lengthy process to bring this park into existence. Three congressional acts formed the outlines of the process: an authorizing act in 1926, an establishing act in 1934, and a supplemental act to facilitate land acquisition in 1938. Park Service administration of the area was initiated in 1930, but park development was supposed to wait until the land base was secured. In the meantime, the states of Tennessee and North Carolina played a crucial role in acquiring the land. Both the states and the federal government had to exercise the power of eminent domain to obtain numerous private holdings. Roughly 6,000 residents were forced to sell and vacate their homes. Even more striking than the number of people who were dispossessed of their land, perhaps, was the vast extent of these private holdings. Altogether, the acquired area covers more than half a million acres, equivalent to half the state of Rhode Island. While 85 percent of this area was owned by logging companies, the remaining 15 percent encompassed more than 1,000 farms. Park Service officials in the 1930s and 1940s were vividly aware that much of the park area was heavily impacted by farming, grazing, and logging. They talked of allowing the land to “revert to wilderness.” Making a park and a wilderness from settled and logged-off lands had both political and environmental consequences. The twin legacies of dispossession and wilderness reclamation persist into the twenty-first century. No other national park contains so many cemeteries, many of which are still visited by descendants of the people who were buried there. Sections of the park that were once farmed or logged still exhibit less biodiversity than those sections that were left untouched, and even the casual observer can detect the difference in structure between primeval and second-growth forest. Much of the park’s road and trail system is built on old logging railroads. Through the years the most important legacy of dispossession involved the federal government’s unfulfilled obligation to Swain County, North Carolina. When some 44,000 acres were added to the park in the 1940s, the federal government made an agreement whereby the Park Service would, subject to congressional appropriation, attempt to build a road along the north shore of Fontana Lake, newly created behind Fontana Dam. The road proved to be ecologically unsound and incompatible with the park’s wilderness values, but Swain County was never reconciled to the road’s forfeiture nor was it compensated for the land, as county residents believed they ought to be. The north shore road controversy constantly played into the politics of park planning and funding and remained unresolved until 2007. It was a persistent thorn in the side of park management. Whereas managers in most national parks strove for the optimum balance of preservation and use, superintendents of Great Smoky Mountains National Park often had to triangulate between preservation, use, and the government’s agreement with Swain County. Swain County is one of seven counties surrounding the park. Three are in North Carolina and four are in Tennessee.1 The park area is roughly evenly proportioned between Tennessee and North Carolina. From its inception, Great Smoky Mountains National Park was a two-state 1 The counties are Graham, Swain, and Haywood in North Carolina, and Cocke, Sevier, Blount, and Monroe in Tennessee. Park staff commonly speak of “the six counties” rather than seven, as Monroe County has a comparatively minor relationship with the park. 2 project and the federal-state relationship common to all national parks was complicated by that fact. Cooperation between Tennessee and North Carolina sometimes broke down. Park boosters in the two states accused one another of seeking advantage. With the Tennessee side attracting perhaps two-thirds of all park use, conditions were inherently unequal. Park Service efforts to be even-handed affected park development, the interpretive program, and the distribution of ranger and maintenance personnel. Another feature of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that relates to its location in the eastern states is the important role that parkways and regional planning have played in its history. Parkways are primarily confined to the eastern United States, and no other national park has had such a close relationship to parkway development as Great Smoky Mountains. The Blue Ridge Parkway adjoins the park on the south, while the Foothills Parkway adjoins and parallels the park boundary on the north. These parkways stirred enormous interest in the states and counties and on the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and the politics of parkway development often impinged on the politics of park development. At the same time, the Park Service could not ignore regional growth issues such as the development of Interstate 40, which skirts the park’s eastern boundary. Due to the management challenges posed by regional development and population pressure, Great Smoky Mountains was selected in the early 1970s as one of two pilot parks for a revolutionary experiment in planning. This planning effort had two principal features. First, it sought to integrate park and regional development plans; and second, it sought to involve public input to an unprecedented degree.