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Stewardship focus of Great Smoky Mountains National Park's 75th anniversary

Published January 3rd, 2009 | 0 Comments

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is celebrating a major milestone in 2009. The park, established June 15, 1934, will mark its 75th anniversary with a yearlong celebration of the people who made it possible and an emphasis on the stewardship required to keep it viable for the next 75 years and beyond.

Stewardship, park superintendent Dale Ditmanson explains in a special anniversary edition of Smokies Life magazine, is more than just a word.

“It really speaks to our responsibility to care for this wonderful place. The one thing the 75th anniversary is not about is just blowing out candles on a cake and going home,” he said.

Instead, the anniversary will serve to commemorate and highlight the park’s biologically diverse natural resources, cultural history, and the host of recreational and educational opportunities it offers the more than 9 million visitors who pass through its gates each year.

“The celebration is an opportunity to tell the stories of the people who helped shape the national park — both the small groups of regional leaders who exerted their influence to make the park a reality and the thousands of mountain families who sacrificed their homes and lands when the park was created,” said Nancy Gray, a media specialist for Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Gatlinburg.

“We will be highlighting achievements and focusing on developing new support to help the park overcome challenges and protect the natural and cultural resources for generations to come,” Gray said.

Throughout 2009, there’ll be dozens of events in and outside the park to celebrate the milestone. Among them is a Governor’s Proclamation ceremony planned for the week of April 20 at Clingmans Dome and a three-event anniversary weekend, June 13-15, designed to showcase Cades Cove, Sugarlands and Oconaluftee.

An official rededication of the park, reminiscent of the historic 1940 dedication, is scheduled for Sept. 2 at Newfound Gap.

In between, a wide variety of community events — everything from hikes and scavenger hunts to musical performances — will be held in and around neighboring communities to mark the occasion and showcase the nation’s most visited national park.

A special “Virtual Visitors Center” has been created online (www.GreatSmokies75th.org) to serve as a central clearinghouse for information and events pertaining to the park’s anniversary.

“It will be the place for one-stop shopping to get involved and chart vacation plans and site visits to the park and surrounding areas,” said 75th Anniversary coordinator Ann Froschauer.

Dolly Parton, who often refers to her Smoky Mountains upbringing during live performances as well as in her music, will serve as the park’s ambassador for the 75th anniversary. As such, she will lend her name and image to a variety of events, activities and informational media.

“The Smokies are part of my DNA,” Parton said in a release announcing her selection. “I have always been an ambassador, but I am particularly honored to become ‘official’ for this special 75th anniversary.”

Parton, who grew up in the foothills of the Smokies in Sevier County, has also written an album titled “Sha-Kon-O-Hey” — the phonetic spelling of the Cherokee words for “Land of Blue Smoke” — and will donate the rights from it to the park through Friends of the Smokies, one of two partner organizations that assist the National Park Service in its mission to preserve and protect the park. Friends is both a fund-raising and awareness-raising partner of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and also recruits volunteers to assist with needed projects.

“We were exceedingly pleased by Dolly’s generosity — her enthusiasm about getting involved with the anniversary,” said Friends president Jim Hart. “She is ... obviously very much in demand for all sorts of very worthy causes. So we were touched that she felt such a strong bond to the mountains and wanted to find a way to help preserve them.”

The establishment of a national treasure

Prior to the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, all of the major national parks were located in the western portion of the United States and were created by the federal government on mostly public lands.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park changed all that. But it didn’t come easily. In fact, by all accounts, it was a labor of love — one that took lots of money, lots of time and lots of sacrifices.

From the get-go, park supporters faced two very big obstacles: the fact that none of the land deemed suitable for the park was owned by the federal government and a standing declaration by Congress not to appropriate money for the purchase of land for national parks.

Even after National Park Service officials came up with a plan to designate potential sites appropriate for national park status and then guide the states to purchase the land and donate it to the park system, folks in North Carolina and Tennessee still faced a daunting task: To raise an estimated $10 million in one of the nation’s poorest regions.

The drive to create a national park took a giant leap forward in the mid-1920s when two groups — one centered around Knoxville and another in Asheville, N.C. — that had once competed over the location finally began pulling together for a park halfway between the two cities, smack dab in the heart of the Smokies.

By the late 1920s, the legislatures of both Tennessee and North Carolina appropriated $2 million each for land purchases. Additional money was raised by individuals, private groups and school children who pledged their pennies, and by 1928, a total of $5 million had been raised.

Increased land prices nearly brought the campaign to a halt until a $5 million donation from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial Fund saved the day.

The campaign waged on despite difficult challenges including acquiring the property from home owners and timber companies who required compensation. Unlike land for other national parks, the Smokies had to be purchased tract by tract from timber companies and land owners — some of whom needed to stay and others who simply didn’t want to go. In the end, some were allowed to stay under lifetime leases; others were granted shorter stays as long as they agreed to not cut timber, hunt or trap, or otherwise live as they always had.

The park’s first superintendent arrived in 1931, and the park was officially created a few years later in 1934 — with much of the early development including many of the bridges, trails and campgrounds that remain today completed by by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) between 1933 and 1942. The park was formally dedicated in September 1940 by President Franklin Roosevelt — the only sitting president to date to ever visit the park.

Why it matters

Straddling the border between North Carolina and Tennessee and covering 800 square miles, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the largest federally protected upland reserve east of the Mississippi River.

Its biological diversity is its hallmark.

No other area of equal size in a temperate climate matches the diversity of plants, animals and invertebrates that exist in the park. More than 12,000 species have been documented in the park, and scientists believe an additional 90,000 species may live there.

Kingsport native Mary Silver is among those in awe of the park’s many ecosystems and diversity.

“To me, what’s special about the park is that there’s so much there — from really small to really big ecosystems and so many different habitats,” said Silver.

An educator at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, Silver grew up in Kingsport’s Warriors’ Path State Park, where her dad, Marty, serves as the park’s naturalist. After graduating from Dobyns-Bennett in 2002, she attended Northland, an environmental college in northern Wisconsin, to become an educator and now shares her expertise with school groups and visitors to Tremont — a residential environmental center located within the national park.

“I’ve been there since May of 2006, and it’s a great place to be right now,” Silver said. “When you come to Tremont, you get out of the car when you get there, and you don’t get back in until you leave.”

That total immersion in all the park has to offer, Silver says, provides visitors with experiences and opportunities that those who just passing through may never see.

“I think you have to get out on some of the trails — and maybe not the most popular ones — to really appreciate what the park has to offer,” Silver said.

“There are so many creeks and hiking trails to explore. Even if you just park beside the road and get out and play somewhere, you can discover so much more than what [most people] see,” she said.

The park is home to some 100 species of native trees, more than in any other North American national park, and more than 1,500 other flowering plant species.

It boasts the most diverse population of salamanders — with at least 30 different species identified — of any place in the world. And it’s home to more than 200 species of birds, 66 types of mammals, 39 varieties of reptiles and 43 species of amphibians.

Elevations in the park range from 840 feet to 6,643 feet with 16 peeks that exceed 6,000 feet.

Recreationally, it’s a mecca for hikers, campers and other outdoor enthusiasts with 800-plus miles of trails (including 70 miles of the Appalachian Trail), 10 developed campgrounds, 100-plus backcountry campsites, 11 picnic areas and four riding stables.

“My favorite hike is a loop that’s got the Appalachian Trail, Sweat Heifer Trail, Grassy Branch Trail and back onto the AT,” Silver said, adding that it’s not advisable for beginners.

“It’s pretty difficult, actually,” she said, adding that there are two shelters on the route, which make it suitable for an overnight or three-day hike. Some less intimidating treks include Porters Creek and Andrews Bald trails.

“My favorite tent campground in the park is Cosby. There’s not quite as many people, and there are some nice trails there,” Silver said, “and the town of Cosby has nice apple orchards and things there for visitors to enjoy.”

The key, she said, is to get out and enjoy what is there — and to share it with others.

“By giving kids (and anyone for that matter) the chance to get outside and appreciate what’s out there, they’re going to become more concerned about what’s happening to it and taking care of and protecting it,” she said.

That appreciation will help breed the stewardship that’s going to be necessary to overcome the significant issues facing the park now and in its next 75 years — things like air quality impacts on the park flora, fauna, soil and water; non-native insects and diseases on the forest; and the huge footprint left by the millions of people who visit annually.

Ways to preserve a gem

There’s no better way to help preserve the park for future generations than to become a responsible user of it, said the park’s superintendent.

That includes following the regulations and guidelines, cooperating with park officials and following simple Leave No Trace guidelines that remind visitors to always “Leave things better than when you came.”

Visitors and park enthusiasts can also donate money and time to the preservation effort.

For details on various ways to get involved, stop by one of the park’s three visitors centers, visit www.NPS.gov or contact one of the park’s preservation partners.

For information about Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, call (865) 932-4794 or visit www.FriendsOfTheSmokies.org. For details about the Great Smoky Mountains Association, call (865) 436-7318 or visit www.SmokiesInformation.org.

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