Great Smoky Mountains was the first big national park established in the eastern United States. The National Park Service was still quite new when the goal of forming a national park in the southern Appalachians began to take shape. Forming the park was a major undertaking because the land was in private ownership and had to be purchased with money raised from private donations. Yet the project was vitally important to make the National Park System truly national in scope. The grassroots effort started in the 1920's and was carried to completion under Park Service leadership in the 1930's and 40's.
Even back then the park's advocates saw the need to have a mountain playground in the East to serve the masses of working families who could not reach the many national parks in the West. In postwar America, as public use of national parks surged, Great Smoky Mountains National Park became the most popular national park in the nation.
Writing the administrative history of this park was an exciting challenge as there were a great many management issues and long-fought conservation battles to cover. I gained a new appreciation for the often maligned director of the National Park Service in the 1930's, Arno B. Cammerer.
It was personally rewarding to work with an old friend on this project. Steve Kemp is with the Great Smoky Mountains Association, and he and I were pals from years ago when we met as summer employees at Signal Mountain Lodge in Grand Teton National Park, each of us still in our teens. That summer we not only forged a deep friendship, we also found a connection to national parks that has served us ever since.
