Celebration recognizes Knoxville’s role in creating the park

The centennial celebration of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is still a decade away, but the 100-year milestones have already begun. This month, a three-day event in Knoxville will celebrate the first steps toward the park’s creation taken in 1923 and 1924, highlighting Knoxville’s role in bringing that dream to fruition and using historic photographs and films to tell the tale.

“It’s a complex story, and we’re excited about telling some of the drama, the players, all of the Knoxvillians who were involved,” said Paul James, director of publishing and development for the Knoxville History Project and assistant secretary of Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association. “It’s a great opportunity to be able to talk about them. People can read about them, people can see them on the big screen, and learn much more about how this movement started in Knoxville.”

“Birth of a National Park in the Smokies,” hosted by Knoxville History Project, will take place Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, July 27, at venues throughout downtown Knoxville. The weekend will kick off at 7 p.m. July 25 at Central Cinema with a special screening of the rarely seen 1927 silent film Stark Love, shot in the Smoky Mountains and starring Knoxville actress Helen Mundy. A two-day educational symposium featuring programs by James and Jack Neely, both of the Knoxville History Project, as well as respected Smokies authors such as David Brill, Daniel S. Pierce, and Ken Wise, will follow at the East Tennessee History Center. A highlight of the weekend will be a showing of photographs and movies shot in the 1920s by Jim and Robin Thompson, brothers who were prolific Knoxville photographers and Smokies enthusiasts. That screening will take place 7 p.m. July 26 at the historic Bijou Theatre.

In a time when photography equipment was expensive and cumbersome, and it was easier for a Knoxville resident to reach Times Square than Cades Cove, these images—like those of George Masa on the North Carolina side—were instrumental in drumming up support for the national park.

“Photography was not that old at the time, and there just weren’t a lot of people going into the mountains and taking these kinds of photographs,” said Eric Dawson, manager of the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection and Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound at Knox County Library, which holds these historic photos and movies. “And the Thompsons also shot hours of motion pictures, moving images in the 1920s and 1930s. I’m not aware of another film collection that documents the Smoky Mountains this early to this extent.” 

Speakers at the event will put these images in context, helping people understand what the landscape looked like 90 to 110 years ago and offering rarely seen glimpses into the lives of “people who are, in part, responsible for the creation of this park or early advocates and enjoyers of the mountains.”

While suggestions to create a national park in the Smokies had been made as far back as 1899, the effort that ultimately led to the park’s establishment originated in Knoxville in 1923 with Anne M. Davis, who would be elected Tennessee’s third-ever female state representative in 1925. After a visit to Yellowstone National Park, she voiced a newfound conviction to her husband, Willis P. Davis: the Smokies should become a national park too.

That conversation led Anne to run for office—with the park’s creation a critical part of her platform—and Willis to gather the Knoxville Automobile Club for a meeting on October 22, 1923. Discussing the national park idea with these club members led to the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association on December 21, 1923. The establishment of this group, a nonprofit that still exists today, is recognized as the first of the centennial milestones to be celebrated in the coming years, with another important date arriving in step with the event itself—the 100-year anniversary of a July 1924 meeting of the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee, which was tasked with finding a location for a new national park in the East.

“This is 100 years ago exactly to the month when Col. David Chapman, kind of a de facto head of the Conservation Association, instructed Jim Thompson to take as many of his great photographs of the Smokies as he could, put them in the back of his car, drive to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, and set them up ahead of the meeting,” said James.

The Smokies were not on the list of proposed park sites, but after seeing the photos, the committee members were convinced that they should be. They set up an expedition the following month to see for themselves, and an August 1924 excursion to Mount Le Conte persuaded them. Many obstacles lay ahead, but the Great Smokies were on the road toward national park status.

“Folks should know this park didn’t just fall out of heaven,” said Jim Matheny, a member of the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association board. “It took a lot of work.”

The photos and films show that hard work, but they also show the lighter side. Viewers can see the young adults of 100 years ago making fake beards out of moss, pretending to shave with an axe, and waving lightheartedly from the summit of Mount Le Conte, joy written on their faces.

“They’re doing the same thing that people do today,” said Dawson. “It’s still such a thrill to go into the mountains.”

Through 2034, a “steady march” of centennial milestones awaits, said Dana Soehn, president and CEO of Friends of the Smokies, one of the event’s sponsors, providing a chance to “celebrate the ingenuity and tenacity of the people who came up with this brilliant idea 100 years ago and had the dedication to stick with it.”

“Along the way,” said James, “we encourage people to learn more about the Smokies, to go and visit the Smokies, enjoy what we have on our doorstep, but also to delve into the books that people have written over the last century and be aware of the wonderful digital collections that are available online, and hopefully get more inspired about the history of the Smokies.”

All programs planned as part of “Birth of a National Park in the Smokies” are free to attend, but registration is requested. For a full schedule, or to register, visit knoxvillehistoryproject.org/smokies.