Great Smokies

The Great Smoky Mountains lie between Tennessee and North Carolina, a primitive wilderness of virgin forests, fast-flowing streams, sky-tumbling peaks. Clingman Dome rises 6,619 rocky feet in the air.* Besides swarms of game, the woods shelter hundreds of mountaineer families, clannish, illiterate, strongly Anglo-Saxon, who preserve their tradition of armed feuds and moonshine. Six years ago lowlanders who had enjoyed vacations in the Great Smokies formed the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association, asked the U. S. Department of the Interior to create a national park on the tract. Congress marked off 704,000 acres as suitable, promised to take over administration when North Carolina and Tennessee had bought at least 427,000 acres and deeded it over to the U. S. The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and John Davison Rockefeller Jr. promised to match, dollar for dollar, any amount up to $5,000,000 raised by the two states for land purchase. Last week Governor Henry Hollis Horton of Tennessee and Governor Oliver Max Gardner of North Carolina, journeyed to Washington, jointly presented Secretary of the Interior Wilbur with the beginnings of their park--deeds for 158,799 Great Smoky acres. Governor Gardner said the mountain forests in the park area were full grown when Columbus discovered America. Governor Horton described the race for land between the two states. Secretary Wilbur thanked North Carolina, Tennessee, the Rockefellers, marveled at "the largest real estate operation with which I have ever been associated."

Tennessee Great Smoky Mountain Park Commission announced that it would need about a year more to collect its half of the required land. Land-rooted mountaineers refuse to sell their ancestral acres, have to be displaced by slow court condemnation proceedings.

The Great Smoky National Park, the only one like it east of Yellowstone, will be approached from Knoxville or Asheville. It will be about 50 by 25 miles in area. Without spoiling the landscape, the U. S. will build trunk roads and trails, camp shelters, telephone lines. Hunting will be prohibited, but 400 miles of trout-filled streams will be open to visiting fishermen.

*A hundred miles away is Mt. Mitchell (6,711 ft.), highest peak east of the Rockies.

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