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1930
1930: Representatives from both states including Gov. Henry Horton of Tennessee and Gov. Max O. Gardner of North Carolina travel to Washington D.C. to present 158,876.5 acres in deeds to the U.S. government. This is enough land to gain the basic protection of the National Park Service by bringing in a superintendent and a crew of law enforcement rangers to monitor and protect the area.
> National Park Movement
> National Park Movement
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1931
1931: Horace Kephart, North Carolina naturalist, former park resident and early park advocate, and author of Our Southern Highlanders, is killed in an auto accident.
Our Southern Highlanders
1931: The Park’s first superintendent, J. Ross Eakin, former superintendent of Glacier NP, and his small staff of rangers arrive for work.
May 1st 1931: 7,500 rainbow trout fingerlings are released into Forney Creek, inaugurating what the park hopes will be an intensive restocking program. Unfortunately, nearly all of the trout released are non-native Rainbow Trout, a practice that will continue for many years.
> Righting a Restocking Wrong
> Fisheries in the Smokies
1932
1932: The Knoxville Southern League baseball team is named “ The Smokies”.
1933
1933: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as a part of his New Deal, creates the Civilian Conservation Corps, members of which appear in the park shortly after. Over the next several years the men of the CCC will build much of the basic infrastructure of the park such as roads, trails and buildings.
> CCC in the Smokies
The CCC in the Smokies
1933: Early park advocate and photographer, George Masa, died of influenza. Masa and friend Horace Kephart worked tirelessly in North Carolina to ensure the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Equipped with a homemade bicycle wheel odometer, Masa cataloged Smokies peaks, the distances between them, and he names given to them by local settlers and the Cherokee.
> George Masa
1934
1934: Congress passes legislation providing that the then 400,000-acre holding “be established as a completed park for administration, protection and maintenance,” thus establishing June 15, 1934, as the official birth date of GSMNP.
>National Park Movement
>National Park Movement
October 8, 1934: The 10-cent GSMNP stamp goes on sale to commemorate the official birthday of the park..
1935
1935: GSMNP welcomes Arthur Stupka, a zoologist from Acadia National Park (The first National Park in the east), as the first park naturalist. Stupka begins a survey of the resource that will be referred to for years to come, building a foundation for later Park Resource Education and Inventory and Monitoring programs.
1935: The Wilderness Society is created.
> The Wilderness Society
> Prominent People in the Wilderness Movement
1939
1939: The inauguration of the ranger- naturalist program occurs with great success. Because of the lack of visitor facilities, most of these programs are hikes, varying in length from short walks to overnight excursions.
> Explore the Smokies with a Ranger
Smokies WPA Poster