United States. National Park Service

“ The streams and rivers of the Smokies are famous for their purity. All who come to these mountains are impressed by the beauty of the waterways that have carved their way into the lush wilderness. More than 300 streams flow throughout the park. To many of us these streams mean only one thing, trout. Actually, more than 70 species of fish have been collected in the park, such as chubs, shiners, minnows, dace, catfish, suckers, sculpins, darters, and even lamprey. ”

“ Technological change transformed many of the yard’s oldest trades by the 1930s, while the growing size and complexity of ships required more and more workers. Such large government employers as shipyards were seen by policy makers as places to both promote economic stability and save money. Early in the Depression these two goals were addressed, respectively, with lower and upper limits for each yard’s workforce—at Charlestown, 1,500 and 1,800. The workforce stayed generally within these limits until 1935, when it began growing, reaching some 5,000 workers by late 1939. ”

“ A community had been formed.
But the life in these small communities was not easy. Each family farmed for a living; each family homestead provided for its own needs and such luxuries as it could create. Isolation from outside markets made cash crops, and hence cash itself, relatively insignificant. The settlers of the Great Smokies depended upon themselves. They built their own cabins and corncribs, their own meat- and apple- and spring-houses. They cultivated a garden whose corn, potatoes, and other vegetables would last the family through the winter. ”

“ Although ranging farther and farther afield, they remain obedient to their mother, and scamper back to their burrow when commanded. The first few weeks above ground is a time of weaning, learning, and conditioning.
During their first few days in society, pups have the run of the town. Boundaries that adults respect do not exist for them, as they wander about, inspecting every feature of their new world. The young have an insatiable need for body contact and much time is spent at play, and in grooming and kissing, activities that seem to reinforce the social nature of the prairie dogs. ”

“ Each animal and plant drops out at a different limit as you gain altitude, but more than half of your journey will be through deciduous forest, of the cove hardwood type or oak woodland. Smokies forests are rich: there are more tree species here than in all of Northern Europe. ”

“ The yard offers the visitor a captivating glimpse into the activities that for nearly two centuries supported the United States Navy. Here on the home front, thousands of civilian workers and navy personnel built, repaired, and supplied warships from the majestic sailing vessels of the early 19th century to the powerful steel navy of the 20th century. ”

“ Originally they were intended for the defense of free-soil settlers in Kansas, but Brown was unable to pay for them until the spring of 1859, when he made final arrangements to use them at Harpers Ferry. Knowing that most of the slaves he expected to join him were unskilled in the use of firearms, he decided they could 25 handle a pike. A thousand men armed with pikes and backed by Brown’s more experienced “soldiers” could constitute a formidable army. ”

“ These include ground-nesting birds, yellow adder’s-tongue and other wildflowers, and possibly deer and bear.
Studies are underway to determine the extent of the boar’s damage, and hence the real threat they pose. But we have no good comparative figures on the populations of other species for the years before boars arrived. Despite this lack, it has not been difficult to brand the boar a villain. But to control them has not been so easy. In good years they thrive—and gobble up more park resources. ”

“ Our imaginary journey into the past has reached its end. We have seen a day at Agate as it might have been 20 million years ago. We have watched the animals going about their daily lives during times of plenty and have seen it as it was later, when death’s heavy hand left a magnificent fossil heritage. This unique place is a window into the past, a window through which we can look back at any time and observe life at Agate millions of years ago.
38 Excavations at Agate Springs
The first fossils were collected in volume in 1904 by Olaf Peterson of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. ”

“ And looming beside and above them all stood the 36,400 timbered hectares (90,000 acres) of the Champion Coated Paper Company, an area that included Deep Creek and Greenbrier Cove and the headwaters of the Oconaluftee River.
The companies needed men to cut the trees, skid the logs, work the animals, saw the lumber, lay the roads. They called upon the mountaineers who still owned small tracts in Cades Cove and Cataloochee and lower Greenbrier and throughout the Smokies; or they allowed some workers who had sold forested land to stay in their homes, though now on company property ”

“ John E. Cook, Aaron D. Stevens, and John H. Kagi. Each would play an important role in the attack on Harpers Ferry.
Cook, 27-year-old member of a wealthy Connecticut family, had attended Yale University and studied law in New York City before going to Kansas in 1855. He stood about 5 feet 5 inches tall, had long, silk-blond hair that curled about his neck, and “his deep blue eyes were gentle in expression as a woman’s.” Brown’s son Salmon, who knew Cook in Ohio and Kansas, characterized him as “highly erratic” in temperament “and not overly stocked with morality. ”

“ Hugging the steep upper slopes of the Tower’s circular base, the trail allows a speedy orbit. The falcon continues to scream. Now along the southeastern face, I can hear the climbers shout to one another. The belly of the cloud is overhead and angry-black. Lightning flashes are now immediately followed by loud reports, sharp as splitting wood. I should turn back 42 and drop to the nearby trail that returns to the campground, but the swell of wind in the pines and the occasional crash of falling snags is invigorating. A sudden invasion of cold air means the rain will come heavy and soon. ”

“ Perhaps we humans could be considered semi-aquatic ourselves, so strongly does water attract us. In the Smokies people love to visit waterfalls, plunge into favorite swimming holes, play among the rocks and white water, and fish up and down the streams. One of my favorite activities is simple stream-watching. Just pick a sunny rock, sit down with your lunch, and watch. That’s all there is to it. Trout will eventually grow bold enough to come out of hiding. Birds fly out of the dense forest to feed in the 43 sunlit shrubs along the stream. ”

“ The Snake River cutthroat trout indeed delights the angler, but more important is its role in the wildlife community. The cutthroat consumes aquatic insects, invertebrates, and small fish, helping to keep these populations in check naturally. This trout is also consumed, providing food for bears, eagles, ospreys, and otters. If the fish population declines, so will the animals that depend on it for food. As fishing pressure continues to grow, park managers may have to protect this natural population of Snake River cutthroat to maintain the national park’s wildlife community. ”

“ By the 1600s these Indians had built in the Southern Appalachians a Nation hundreds of years old, a way of life in harmony with the surrounding natural world, a culture richly varied and satisfying. But barely two centuries later, the newly formed government of the United States was pushing the Cherokees ever farther west. In the struggle for homeland, a new era had arrived: a time for the pioneer and for the settler from Europe and the eastern seaboard to stake claims to what seemed to them mere wilderness but which to the Cherokees was a physical and spiritual abode. ”

“ Each, through its interaction with plants and animals, affects the total fabric of Smokies life. Far below, the trees of a cove forest march up a stream valley; on the slopes above them spreads a mantle of oaks. A narrow ridge far down and off to the right bears the dark green of pines. Nearer, we see the ragged lower edge of the spruce-fir forest, where it fingers into the northern hardwoods below it. But we sense an overall unity because each kind of forest merges into the next, creating an unbroken mantle that lies over all the ridges as far as the eye can see. ”

“ In 1945, a yard historian wrote: “Experience over the past two years has proven that female employees are able to work efficiently on an equal basis with men on many jobs that were formerly considered to be men’s jobs.”
Welders at Charlestown during World War II.
The yard’s clerical workers enlisted as Yeomen-F (female) at the outbreak of World War I. Women also worked as radio operators and at the ropewalk.
Many responded to posters urging women to fill an industrial job and “free a man to fight.” ”

“ If times are good, animal populations can be quite high. If the food supply decreases, massive dieoffs result. Successive cycles of plenty and poverty then produce high populations followed by dieoffs.
The fossil evidence suggests that a prolonged drought occurred during the Golden Age at Agate, resulting in death everywhere. The vast numbers of rhino skeletons preserved at Carnegie Hill and University Hill provide paleontological evidence that the drought must have lasted for several years. ”

“ Until World War I, jobs connected with supply would remain more stable than those related to construction and repair. In the late 1880s and ’90s, managers found ways to transfer men in the latter trades to other divisions within the yard in order to keep their services on call. But in the early ’80s the yard could find virtually no work for men skilled in the craft of wooden shipbuilding—formerly the elite of the workforce. After Virginia and the other vessels had been turned into stacks of wood, those who had done the work were sent home. ”

“ We see landslide scars on the mountainside that probably came during a storm like the one we just experienced, when the earth, heavy with water and lying thinly over the smooth rock beneath, could no longer hang on and slipped in a crashing avalanche down the slope; like the pine beetle, landslides are one of the many natural forces that challenge the forest’s powers of recuperation. Chimney swifts pick insects from the air and we hear the chatter of a red squirrel interrupted in its hunt for cones. Like the shrew, each in its own special way is busy gaining the fuel to stay alive. ”

“ Real transition would come only with the upheavals of the succeeding decades, only as a result of America’s industrialization and two world wars and the arrival of a national park. Yet the beginning of a new century did inject one major new element into the lifestream of the Great Smoky Mountains: the lumber companies and their money.
The people who lived here had logged before. A man might operate a family enterprise along some hillside or in a low-lying cove, using a few strong-armed relatives or neighbors to help cut and move the choicest timber of the forest. ”