The Southern Highland Reader

GSMNP–Congressman Heath Shuler recently helped secure a $13 million down-payment from the federal government to help put an end to the nearly-seven-decade controversy over a road once planned along the north shore of Lake Fontana.

The payment, part of a larger, undisclosed sum, would compensate Swain County for the federal government’s choice not to build the road, which was promised in 1943.

National Parks Traveler writer Danny Bernstein gives a history of the controversy here.

Here’s an excerpt:

The North Shore Road issue was revived again in 2001 when former Congressman Charles Taylor, a Republican from western North Carolina, obtained $16 million for further construction of the North Shore Road. This set off a process that looked into the environmental impact of a 35-mile road. The National Park Service held public input forums in various locations around the Smokies and accepted comments from anyone in the U.S. on various ways to resolve the 1943 agreement. Thousands of pages were generated, reviewed, and discussed. Descendants of the original settlers were the only ones who wanted a road in the park. Almost all comments were against the road and for a financial settlement with Swain County, where Fontana Dam is located, one of the four parties to the original agreement.

In December 2007, the Department of the Interior made a decision that officially called for a yet-to-be-specified multi-million-dollar monetary settlement to Swain County instead of a road through one of the most pristine and untouched areas in the East. Though the park is now protected and the North Shore Road will never be built, Congress still has to approve the funds to settle the 1943 agreement.

GSMNP–Smoky Mountain News outdoor writer Don Hendershot wrote last week that the 2010 omnibus spending bill, due to be signed in a couple of weeks, might  include the long-awaited cash settlement that would (in theory) lay to rest Swain County’s North Shore Road controversy.

Hendershot quotes anonymous sources, and hints that the dollar amount could be greater than the projected $30 million.

Here’s an excerpt from Hendershot’s story:

After more fits, there was another start at construction back in 2000 when then Rep. Charles Taylor and then Sen. Jesse Helms appropriated $16 million for construction of the North Shore Road. Even though the $16 million was about $550 million short of the estimated cost of such a road, the appropriation spurred some Swain County residents to action.

The Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County was created in 2001. Although totally lacking in acronym-imagination, the CEFSC did strike a chord with many Swain County residents and environmental groups with its proposal for a cash settlement in lieu of the improbable North Shore Road. Through some mathematical calisthenics the group came up with a settlement figure of $52 million.

Read the whole piece here

See a timeline through 2001, also from the Smoky Mountain News, here.

GSMNP–National Geographic Traveler, in its sixth rating of worldwide travel destinations, calls the Great Smoky Mountains National Park “a national treasure surrounded by a bathtub ring of ugly, unplanned development.”

An excerpt from a story on the matter from the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The survey of 437 experts, which including travel writers, historic preservationists, ecologists and others, placed the Smokies in the next-to-worst category: “Places with Troubles.”

The judges whose comments were published with the story were slightly more lenient on the North Carolina side of the Smokies than the Tennessee side, which one judge described as displaying “the worst excesses of mass tourist development … ”

Tourism officials from Tennessee told the News Sentinel that the rankings were inherently biased against more popular and accessible locations.

Read the Knoxville News Sentinel story here.
Read the National Geographic Traveler story here.

GSMNP–Those thumps you heard earlier were tourism folks fainting dead away at the news that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will close its wildly popular Cades Cove loop for three months in the spring for repaving and sprucing up.

An excerpt from the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The park examined a “full range of options” to do the work, according to Superintendent Dale Ditmanson.

All would have required unsuitable detours for the 3,000 to 4,000 vehicles that enter the cove each day, Ditmanson said.

Night-time work also was considered, but the road would have had to be closed for the rebuilding of the sub-base.

The park chose to close the road and recycle it in place as the most efficient and “environmentally responsible” way to complete the work, Ditmanson said.

Read the story here.

GSMNP–Great Smoky Mountains National Park managers have announced that the Park’s cooperating partner, Great Smoky Mountains Association, has just published and released its newest book, Smoky Mountain Magic, a novel by Horace Kephart.

Horace Kephart

Although completed in 1929, two years before the author’s death, the novel was never published until now.

Cathy Cook, Chief of Resource Education and Science at the Smokies said, “We had no idea that a Kephart novel even existed. The unpublished manuscript for Smoky Mountain Magic was handed down within the Kephart family until it was finally brought to the attention of park superintendent, Dale Ditmanson, by Libby Kephart Hargrave, the author’s great-granddaughter, at one of this year’s 75th Anniversary celebrations.

The typewritten manuscript was complete, having gone through numerous drafts and revisions over the course of the eight years that Horace Kephart labored over it.”

Smoky Mountain Magic’s fictional story takes place during the summer of 1925, mostly along the Deep Creek watershed in the Great Smoky Mountains, but also in a thinly-disguised Bryson City (called Kittuwa) and the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Characters include a mysterious stranger (who resembles the author in his youth), a greedy land baron, a cadre of mountain folk ranging in constitution from stalwart to conniving, a beautiful botanist, a Cherokee chief, and a witch. The novel fits the adventure story genre of the day with a bit of romance interwoven.

The famed author and outdoorsman first came to the Great Smoky Mountains in 1904 looking for a fresh start in life. He moved into an abandoned cabin on a tributary of Hazel Creek, a remote area even by early 20th century southern Appalachian standards. There Kephart befriended his independent and self-reliant neighbors and pursued his passions for hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, and generally living off the land.

The result of his time in what Kephart described as the “back of beyond” were Our Southern Highlanders, the classic work on the people of the Smokies, and Camping and Woodcraft, the definitive work on enjoying the out of doors. Both works are still in print and continue to nurture an enthusiastic following.

During the 1920s, Kephart and his friend and fellow hiker George Masa began a vigorous campaign to have the Great Smoky Mountains protected as a national park. Kephart wrote letters, articles, and a booklet championing the cause, and Masa contributed his breath-taking landscape photographs.

Together they raised awareness of the significance and beauty of the Smokies and sounded the alarm over the devastation being caused by unsound, industrial logging operations. Both Kephart and Masa figure prominently in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park segment of a new 12-hour documentary series by Ken Burns entitled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” which will begin September 27 on PBS.

For their successful effort, both Kephart and Masa have neighboring mountains named for them. A stream, trail, and camping shelter in the national park also bear Kephart’s name.

The 248 page Smoky Mountain Magic is now available in both paperback ($12.95) and hard cover ($19.95). All proceeds are being donated to the Horace Kephart Foundation (in support of the annual Horace Kephart Days Celebration in Bryson City), Great Smoky Mountains Association, and Friends of the Smokies.

GSMNP–A Tennessee man has a date with a magistrate after his pit bull severely injured a deer near Elkmont last week.

The unleashed 100 lb. dog attacked a mature 130 lb. buck, and the deer was so badly wounded that it had to be euthanized.

A news report is here, but the online National Parks Traveler goes into more depth, discussing past incidents:

An excerpt:

A … spokesman at the park said such incidents are fairly rare in the Smokies, and described another situation several years ago that illustrates the value in the “leash law” for protecting pets as well as wildlife. In that case the dog was riding in the bed of a pickup truck which was being driven through the Cades Cove area.

The dog spotted a black bear, jumped out of the truck, and headed for the bear, which was large enough that it wasn’t intimidated by the dog. A chase ensured, and the dog became the prey, running back toward the owner, who had stopped his truck alongside the road. In this case, the pursuing bear reportedly broke off the chase when the dog ran into a group of people who had gathered to watch the action. That case fortunately ended without further incident for both the dog and the bear, but this one could have taken a nasty turn.

Read the post here.

GSMNP/REGIONAL–Among the nation’s national parks, the Great Smoky Mountains park is most often rode hard and put up wet. Perpetually under-funded and over-used, the park, due to its proximity to major urban areas, maintains its long-standing honor as our most visited national park.

A couple of recent news notes are worth circling with the sharpie for this very reason:

One, the park is the happy recipient of $64 million in federal stimulus money, a windfall that will create up to 1,500 new jobs, according to the park superintendent. Two, the park saw an April jump in visitation that lifted it above the 2008 numbers. This might be a little deceiving because of a calendar quirk, but it remains good news for the tourism industry.

As a bonus feature, we offer Tobias Miller, Dillsboro resident, a man of many hats with the park service, all of them sweaty. Miller was featured in last week’s Mountain Xpress.

GSMNP–Yesterday’s announcement from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that it would close caves in the park to help prevent the arrival of “white nose syndrome”, a malady that is killing bats by the hundreds-of-thousands in the northeast, drew blank looks from many of us.

National Parks Traveler provides more information.

Why should we care? Here’s an excerpt from the Traveler story:

… the loss of viable bat populations would certainly have a direct affect on our activities, and on the ecological balance in many national parks. Bats play a major role in controlling insect populations—some bats can eat up to 2,000 mosquito-sized insect in a single night.

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries notes:

Quote:

The impact of white-nose syndrome on bat populations could be highly significant if the condition cannot be controlled and continues to spread. Some WNS caves in New York have experienced declines of more than 90% of the bat populations.Losses in bat populations of this magnitude will cause a substantial ripple effect due to the important role that bats play as insect feeders and as a food source for other animals (hawks, owls, raccoons, skunks, and other animals that prey on bats)….

Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy said,

Quote:

While no one yet knows for sure what is causing WNS and why such large numbers of bats are dying, we will see the ramifications of this in just a few months. Far fewer bats will be out there working to consume mosquitoes and other flying insects that attack people as well as our forests and farmlands.

GSMNP–According to Asheville’s WLOS TV, President Bush, lacking anything else to fret about these days, is pushing to change National Park Service rules so that individual park superintendents would be able to choose whether they want to allow mountain bikes.

Local bikers argue that bikes would cause no more damage than horses already do, but since horses — on the limited trails they can traverse — cause a large amount of damage, the bikers argument doesn’t seem like a great one.

A Great Smoky Mountains National Park spokesperson told WLOS that in his opinion, even if the rules change goes through, it would be a long shot in the Smokies.

The Charlotte Observer’s Jack Horan has a piece on these regulations here.

KNOXVILLE/GSMNP-The Knoxville News-Sentinel offers the first in a planned series of features on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, leading up to it’s 75th anniversary next year.

The News-Sentinel might be the strongest daily newspaper between Raleigh and Nashville, and its online package is well-developed and easy to use.

A quote from the opening segment:

This is your park.

This is our park.

The people, from schoolchildren collecting pennies to a foundation donating $5 million of Rockefeller money, bought this land.

Others – Cherokee and white settlers alike – paid for it with blood and sweat. More than 9 million people a year visit the park and pay no admission for the privilege.

Next year, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park turns 75 years old. The much older mountains within its boundaries have gone from being logged-out yet inhabited to a mature, re-grown forest protected from development but surrounded by vacation cabins, water slides, restaurants, hotels and golf courses, both full-sized and miniature.