The American Guide Series, produced by the Federal Writers’ Project, is one of the most well-known WPA projects. Written as a collection of travel guides, the series included suggested tour routes as well as essays on the history and culture of each U.S. state and territory. Major U.S. cities and several regions were also given their own separate guidebooks.
The state guides give a fascinating snapshot of American life in the 1930s. Written in a lively and approachable style, they detail and celebrate the rich diversity that our country displayed at that time. The writers’ enthusiasm is infectious and their guide is as much fun to read today as it must have been for travelers in the 1930s.
Several historians have written about the American Guide Series over the past 80 years, but no one, to my knowledge, has used them as current-day travel guides. That is just what I set out to do. I am an American historian, art photographer, and enthusiastic traveler. I have read each of these guides. I love them for their wonderful enthusiasm and their curiosity about every aspect of regional life—from food, to linguistics, to folklore, to statistics, to geography, to environment, to history—and especially for their liberal attitudes and respect for diversity. In this series, I will be posting photo essays and articles based upon tours recommended in the guides.
Fern L. Nesson
The Smoky Mountain National park is the most visited national park in our country. Traffic through the park in high season is bumper to bumper. But in early spring, the tourists (and the bears) are just beginning to emerge. When I visited in April, the dogwoods, violets and trillium were in bloom, bumble bees and butterflies swarmed around me, and flies were hatching on the many creeks and rivers, encouraging fishermen to wade into the icy water. The air was clean; traffic was nonexistent in the early morning, becoming moderate on the roads and the hiking trails as the day progressed.
Every corner of the park is beautiful from meadows to waterfalls and stately trees to historic wooden churches and cabins, to blue-tinged mountains receding into the distance. There is a reason that so many people vist: the Smoky Mountains inspire dreams and fire the imagination. The Tennessee Guide gets it just right in describing the natural beauty of the park:
“A part of the Appalachian escarpment, the Great Smoky Mountains form the towering eastern wall of the Great Valley which stretches southward into Tennessee from Virginia. Geologists estimate that the range, composed of sixteen peaks rising more than 6,000 feet, is the oldest mountain formation on the North American continent.
Veil-like mist, called by the mountain-dwelling Cherokee the “Great Smoke,” hovers over the blue peaks and shifts constantly with the wind. The Indians called the range “Great Mountains” – – a name [still] applied to the Smokies today.
The boundary line between North Carolina and Tennessee follows the crestline of the mountains for approximately seventy miles. The entire park – – mountain, ramparts, and wooded valleys stretching northeast and south-west into both States — has a total area of 643 square miles.
Almost wholly forestland, it includes 200,000 acres of virgin hardwoods, one of the largest stands in America. In the 50,000 acres of red spruce are many trees more than 400 years old. Beech forests cover the
lower slopes, and reach even to some of the higher peaks, with especially magnificent specimens at Trillium Gap. There are some fine stands of yellowwood, or “gopher tree,” which the mountain people believe furnished the wood for Noah’s ark.
Treeless areas or “balds”—called “slicks” by the natives because of their deceptive appearance of smoothness—are found on some of the ridge-tops. Some, known as “heath balds,” are covered with shrub growth and are the result of windfall, landslides, and fire.
Others, with neither trees nor shrubs, are of unknown origin. The belief that these open meadows, called “grassy balds,” are old Indian camp sites is strengthened by the fact that good springs are usually found nearby and the areas show the impress of more than a century of grazing. The grassy balds were used as grazing lands until the establishment of the park. Andrew’s Bald on a southern spur of Clingman’s Dome is one of the largest of the grassy balds.
The great variety of both trees and flowers in the Great Smokies is due to the varied character of the terrain and to climatic conditions, which are similar to those of several floral zones. Because of good soil conditions and consistently high rainfall, maple, oak, buckeye, basswood, and chestnut trees reach their largest growth within the park area, and many shrubs attain tree dimension. The largest tree is the yellow poplar or tulip tree,which often reaches a height of nearly 200 feet and a diameter of nine feet.
The mountain laurel—sometimes towering to forty feet—and the rhododendron are the commonest shrubs. Since William Bartram, the first botanist to visit the Great Smokies, reported his findings in 1778, scientists and student groups have regarded the region as one of the richest botanical collecting grounds in America.
Approximately 3,710 varieties of plant life have been listed, including mosses, liverworts, fungi, lichens, ferns, and 1,500 species of higher plant life. From the mountain bases to the high peaks grow almost every kind of wild flowers found from the deep South to Canada. Tree trunks, rocks, and seemingly every inch of soil have some kind of floral coverage.
Masses of color clothe the park from early spring to late fall. Violets, trillium, both white and yellow, trailing arbutus and phlox, open the pageant, and are followed by the azalea, which Bartram so aptly described as enveloping the hillsides in flame. In July, the wild tiger lilies, some with stalks six feet high, cover the open fields with vivid orange. Laurel and rhododendron reach their fullest glory in June, their pink and white blooms giving a roseate glow to the mountainsides.
Later come the white and purple asters and, less profuse, the golden. In October dogwood, witch-hazel, and sumac add a variety of tints; and the winter evergreens with festoons of icicles ‘complete the twelve-months’ cycle of color.”
Tennessee State Guide, p. 514-16
When the Tennessee Guide was written, Smoky Mountains National Park was just about complete after many years of planning and 15 years of work:
“A movement for a national park was started by Asheville, N. C. in 1899 with the organization of the Appalachian Park Association, but it was not until 1924 that the first definite move was made to create a national park along its present lines. In that year Congress appointed the Southern Appalachian Park Commission to investigate and determine a possible area for such a project.
Through the cooperation the U. S. Secretary of the Interior, and on recommendation of the commission, provision was made for the Government’s development of 150,000 acres of land as soon as 427,000 acres—stipulated as a minimum by law—were turned over to it.
The bill to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was signed by President Coolidge on May 22, 1926. In 1928, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial donated $5,000,000 to purchase the required amount of acreage. This gift helped smooth out legal difficulties and litigations with lumber companies [who owned the land.]
The suit to condemn a single tract of 38,288 acres owned by one company was the largest of its kind ever filed in the United States. In 1930, two land grants of 158,876 acres and 138,843 acres were transferred to the Government, and in the following year the park was officially established.”
Tennessee State Guide, p. 516-17
Much of the work of building bridges and roads was done by the WPA. Its characteristic stonework can be seen and admired throughout the park. The WPA also took care to preserve some of the old homesteads and churches of the original 18th century settlers and their descendants. Appalachian families who lived in original cabins on park land were were permitted to stay on their farms during their lifetimes and to maintain their traditional way of life.
“[In the 1920s and 30s,] the pioneer way of life was still to be found within [the park’s] boundaries. During the great westward migration of the eighteenth century, when thousands of English and Scotch-Irish home seekers poured over the Appalachians, many families halted and took up land in the mountain valleys rather than undertake the hard journey westward. Stragglers coming into the mountains after the coves and bottoms were taken up were forced to settle on the ridges where the soil was thin and stony.
Even today a sharp distinction is drawn between the “Covites” — prosperous valley farmers — and the ridge-dwellers, called “Ridgemanites,” a term synonymous with “poor white” in other parts of the South.
Most of the Parks’ cabins were built by early settlers at “log raisings [of] notched logs, cut at the right turn of the moon to insure proper seasoning. [T]he logs were assembled, and a house was often erected in two or three days with the assistance of neighbors. Chimneys were sometimes constructed of logs, laid in clay, and fired hard by chimney heat. Because large families prevailed, [a] loft provided sleeping quarters for youngsters when they graduated from trundle beds.
The conversion of the heart of the Great Smokies into a national park ended the isolation of its people. The swift drastic changes, however, have affected chiefly the younger generation; older people still cling to traditions and customs practiced by their forefathers. In character, the highlander remains independent, unaffected and sure of himself, and never seems hurried about his work or his play. His tastes are simple, and his tradition of open-handed hospitality has the force of a religious law. Much of his social life centers about the little “church house.” Congregations are predominantly Baptist, with a sprinkling of Methodist and Presbyterian.”
Guide, p. 517-18
After the owners died, most of the old cabins were razed but the Park preserved some of their houses so that visitors might see how authentically they lived 200 years after their ancestors first came to farm the land.
In Cades Cove, the park has restored several old farm structures as well including a grist mill and a cantilevered barn and the Cades Cove loop takes you to three of the original churches, along with their graveyards.
Also on the new parkland was the tiny mountain town of Elkmont, a 19th century summer resort community consisting of a small hotel and a few dozen wood cabins:
“ELKMONT (2,146 alt., 110 pop.), 1 m., a resort (hotels and cabins) on a farm once owned by Drury P. Armstrong, Knoxville merchant, whose diary (1844-49) tells of an abundance of game fish, wild fowl, wild animals and large crops here. The railroad of the Little River Lumber Company was the first means of access to the spot. An excursion of the Knoxville Elks caused the place to be called Elks Mountain, but this was later shortened to Elkmont. The Wonderland Club Hotel, built in 1912 and since enlarged, is one of the few resort hotels in the park.The Appalachian Club maintains a smaller clubhouse and a number of cabins.
Across the road from the hotel is the entrance to Le Conte, a private camp for boys.”
Guide, p. 357
When the government bought the land, it allowed the former owners in Elkmont to remain as renters for their lifetimes. The hotel burned but the houses remained. By the 1960’s , the town was deserted and its cabins were falling down. They now have been restored and are open for visitors. It’s great fun to wander through them, wondering what it must have been like for a Knoxville family to spend the summer in these simple surroundings.
When the park was created, the hope was that its creation the would revive the native populations of wild life — and that hope has been amply realized. Even in 1939, the Guide points to the increase in numbers:
“With the exception of waterfowl, all the birds and animals common to Tennessee are found in the Great Smokies. Wasteful hunting and lumbering have depleted the supply of game, but under the present program of conservation wild turkeys, ruffed grouse, white-tailed deer, and black bear are increasing. …
In 1926, at least 80 species [of birds lived in] elevations ranging from 1,500 to 6,642 feet…. Since that time the protection of bird life has resulted in an increase of both the number and kinds of birds. The golden eagle and the northern raven, at present rare species, are among those which have [now] found sanctuary within the park.”
Guide, p.516
Wildlife is flourishing in the park today. It is common to see turkeys and deer in both field and forest and the songs of birds greet you everywhere. Black bear not scarce either. One very fun part of the experience of driving through the park is to come upon a (mini) traffic jam. You learn quickly that this is most likely the result of the sighting of a bear. Cars stop in the middle of the road, people line the verges taking photographs with their cellphones.
Do not drive by (even if you can!) If you stop, you will likely be rewarded with a sighting. In just one afternoon this week, I saw two large bears and two cubs.
The Tennessee Guide is justifiably proud of its national park, Truly it is one of the most beautiful places that I have visited on my travels guide in hand.
April, 2023.
