News
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Full moon and cloudy sky can play tricks
By Charlene Shiver
Marketing and Membership Associate
Saturday, 9:32 p.m. – A dark shadow slowly made its way across the scarred floor of the old church….
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Back of Beyond Wins Thomas Wolfe Literary Award
The Western North Carolina Historical Association has named Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography the winner of the 2019 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Written by George Ellison and Janet McCue, edited by Frances Figart and published by Great Smoky Mountains Association, the book is the 64th winner of this annual recognition of distinction for qualifying works of fiction, nonfiction, drama or poetry.
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National Park Dedicates Dean Stone Bridge
Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials unveiled a bronzed marker along the Foothills Parkway at the newly dedicated Dean Stone Bridge between Walland and Wears Valley.
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Cucumber Gap Loop inspires parental guidance
By Karek Key
I had just come off of a really bad and frustrating weekend of parenting. It was Labor Day, and we had way too many plans and stretched ourselves way too thin. After a lot of stimulation and not enough sleep, it all exploded on Monday. Whining, tears and mysteriously vanished listening skills all resulted in me overreacting and yelling. All in all, we were not at our best selves.
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Gatlinburg’s Artist Community in New Smokies Life
The idea for a series of stories about artists in park gateway communities came to us via Kathie Thomas of Gatlinburg’s HighLand Craft Gallery. Her objective was simple: share about the crafts of local families whose artisan heritage stretches back to pre-park days. I loved the idea and enlisted Sue Wasserman to do the research and writing.
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Genealogical Research Collection Donated to Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials are pleased to announce the addition of a new research collection to the park archives. The Donald Bruce Reagan Genealogical Collection is now available to aid genealogists in researching their family history.
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Family Heirlooms Come Back to the Smokies
Great Smoky Mountains National Park recently received a priceless donation of Cades Cove artifacts to the museum collections. The great-granddaughter of Dan and Sidney Lawson, Robin Derryberry of Chattanooga, TN, donated a chest of drawers, family Bible, wedding portraits, and other family photographs to the National Park Service for longterm preservation at the National Park Service Collections Preservation Center in Townsend, TN.
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The Road that Led Around the World
By Mike Aday
What do Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, Panama and Alaska have in common? They can all boast major roads built by one man, Knoxville native John L. Humbard. Well, technically, a lot of men were involved, but Humbard supervised them all.
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Little Sluice of Heaven: A tiny sliver of the A.T.
By Lisa Duff
Memorial Day Monday found me with a mild case of cabin fever, which was a bit strange since CF is typically a wintertime ailment. What happened was this: I’d successfully managed to add a few at-home days to the end of my vacation to allow for ease of real-world re-entry, and Monday, as it turned out, was one day too many.
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The Strange Case of Cades Lake
Depending on who you were and what you stood for, the idea of turning most of Cades Cove into a 50-foot-deep lake—three miles long and two miles wide—was either brilliant or terrible.
Pro-lake constituents included National Park Service Director Arno B. Cammerer (immortalized by the naming of Mt. Cammerer), Tennessee Governor Gordon Browning, the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association, park booster Col. David Chapman, and Knoxville City Manager George Dempster.
Those opposed included acting and former NPS Directors Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, Robert Sterling Yard of the National Parks Association, and stalwart conservationists Harvey Broome Benton MacKaye.
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