[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 92 (Thursday, June 20, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1136]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    MASS EVICTION UNIQUE TO SMOKIES

                                 ______


                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 20, 1996

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thought the following recent article from 
the Asheville Citizen Times about the formation of the Great Smoky 
Mountains National Park might be of great interest to some of my 
colleagues and many readers of the Record.

                    Mass Eviction Unique to Smokies

                          (By Clarke Morrison)

       As a birthday gift on an August day in 1970, Glenn Cardwell 
     drove his 85-year-old father back in time to a place that had 
     been their home.
       The sight of the beautiful cove, absent the farmsteads and 
     families that once dotted the rolling landscape, prompted a 
     pained recollection of the forced exodus that cleared the way 
     for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
       ``He said the thing he hated most was losing our 
     neighbors,'' Cardwell said of his father, Bill, who died a 
     few months after the visit. ``You can buy a farm anywhere, 
     but tearing up your community does something to your 
     spirit.''
       The Cardwells lived at the mouth of Greenbriar Cove near 
     the park's northern boundary, and so were among the last to 
     have their land condemned by the government. They watched as 
     friends and relations moved on.
       ``They went different directions where the winds of 
     interest were blowing,'' said Cardwell, a supervisory park 
     ranger who will retire in September. ``Some to Virginia, some 
     to Georgia . . . Ten families went to New Mexico. My sadness 
     was watching them leaving us. I remember a lot of them 
     hugging my mother and father and crying.''
       This mass eviction distinguishes the Smokies, home to farms 
     and communities for more than 100 years, from all but a few 
     national parks. For other major parks such as Yellowstone, 
     Congress merely carved them out of lands already owned by the 
     government. And for the most part, these were places where no 
     one wanted to live anyway.
       But land in the mountains of Western North Carolina and 
     eastern Tennessee was owned by hundreds of small farmers and 
     several large timber and paper companies. The Smokies was the 
     first national park to be created totally from privately 
     owned land.
       Quite understandably, the farmers didn't want to be pushed 
     out of the family homesteads where they had lived and tilled 
     the soil for decades, and the companies were reluctant to 
     abandon their timber reserves, miles of railroad tracks, 
     systems of logging equipment and villages of employee 
     housing.
       There were an estimated 1,200 to 1,400 families that had to 
     be moved out, said Tom Robbins, a park ranger and historian 
     who gives programs at the Oconaluftee Visitors Center near 
     Cherokee.
       ``Obviously there were hard feelings all the way around, 
     and still are,'' he said. ``People were uprooted.
       ``Some people tried to look at it from a positive 
     standpoint, particularly those who had farms that were sort 
     of played out. But plenty of people had no desire to sell, 
     but had no choice. It was particularly hard on some of the 
     older people. They figured that was where they were going to 
     die and be buried.''


                           seeds of the park

       The idea of a public land preserve in the Southern 
     Appalachians started in the late 1800s, and by the early 20th 
     century the federal government was under pressure to make the 
     concept a reality.
       The strongest supporters were based in Asheville and 
     Knoxville, Tenn., and the two groups were competitors over 
     the location of the park. Finally they put aside their 
     differences and agreed it should be in the heart of the 
     Smokies, halfway between the two cities.
       The movement was spurred in large part not by 
     conservationists, backpackers or fishermen, but by motorists. 
     Members of newly formed auto clubs wanted good roads through 
     beautiful scenery on which they could drive their cars.


                          legislation approved

       In May of 1926, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill 
     that provided for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains 
     National Park and Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. The 
     legislation allowed the U.S. Department of the Interior to 
     assume responsibility for a park in the Smokies as soon as 
     150,000 acres of land had been bought.
       But the government was not allowed to buy land for national 
     parks, so boosters had to turn their attention to raising 
     money. In the late 1920s the legislatures of North Carolina 
     and Tennessee each appropriated $2 million for land 
     purchases, while individuals and groups contributed another 
     $1 million. But by 1928, the price of the land had doubled 
     and the fund-raising campaign came to a halt.
       Finally the needed funds were in hand when a major 
     foundation endowed by John D. Rockefeller pledged $5 million.
       However, even with the money in hand, actually acquiring 
     the land proved a tedious task. There were some 6,600 tracts 
     that had to be surveyed, appraised and their price haggled 
     over. Many times, the land had to be condemned in court.
       It was tough for many to leave their homes and their ways 
     of life. Some, particularly if they were too old or sick to 
     move, were allowed to remain under lifetime leases. Others 
     were granted shorter leases, but they could not cut timber, 
     hunt or trap.
       The park's first superintendent arrived in 1931. Three 
     years later North Carolina and Tennessee transferred deeds 
     for about 300,000 acres to the federal government, and 
     Congress authorized the development of park facilities.
       Standing at the Rockefeller Monument at Newfound Gap on the 
     North Carolina-Tennessee line in September 1940, President 
     Franklin Roosevelt formally dedicated the Great Smoky 
     Mountains National Park.


                         the park's development

       By then, much of the early work to develop the park had 
     been accomplished by the Civilian Conservation Corps, an 
     agency formed during the Depression to provide work for the 
     legions of unemployment.
       At its peak in the late '30s, the CCC had more than 4,300 
     young men building roads, trails, stone bridges and fire 
     towers, the park's first campgrounds, as well as the 
     Oconaluftee Visitor Center on the North Carolina side and the 
     park headquarters in Tennessee.
       ``There wouldn't have been any early development of the 
     park without the CCC,'' Robbins said.
       Work on the park stopped in the early 1940s when America 
     entered World War II, and the National Park Service's budget 
     was cut drastically.
       Robbins said the Smokies and the country's other parks saw 
     no significant funding until the mid-'50s when Congress 
     infused the agency with new money for a major, 10-year 
     recovery program.
       And the Smokies benefited. It was during that time that the 
     observation tower on Clingmans Dome and the Sugarlands 
     Visitor Center were constructed. Campgrounds and other 
     facilities were renovated.
       Since then, it's been a matter of maintenance. Little new 
     has been built in the park over the past 30 years, and the 
     old structures become more worn and in need of repair with 
     each passing year.

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