Selling an Appalachian Park: The Establishment of Great Smoky Mountain National Park

Keywords: National Parks, Protected Areas, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Appalachia, Tourism
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In 1885, Boston physician Dr. Henry O. Marcy articulated the first published call for the establishment of a national park in the mountains of western North Carolina in the Journal of the American Medical Association. However, it wasn’t until 1926 that congress authorized creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and another eight years before its dedication in 1934. Advocacy for the establishment of a Southern Appalachian park during these years emerged alongside and in response to the rapid changes in the social, economic, and ecological landscape driven by the expansion of industrial logging into the region. Beyond the region, this was a formative period in the development of the National Park System, including the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916 under the directorship of industrialist Stephen Mather. This paper looks at the parallel and intertwining discourses promoting the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) and expansion of the National Park System under Mather. It will explore the ways in which the movement for GSMNP was both a product of the evolving construction of the National Park concept and a force in shaping that concept. In doing so, this history sheds light on many of the challenges facing today’s national parks as they grapple with balancing the ‘dual mandate’ of providing public access while preserving resources.