Customer Reviews

Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat To National Park

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This book provides a good history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The subtitle tells you Pierce's emphasis: he sets the stage with some natural history and then moves to the battle to create the park. This campaign stretches across several chapters and makes up the meat of the book. He concludes with one chapter on the management of the park after establishment, and a conclusion that reflects on the park that we have today.

That capsule summary also lays out the main contrast with Margaret Brown's _The Wild East_, another history of the park that I recommend. Brown is more interested in the people of the region, especially the Cherokees and white mountaineers that lived in the Smokies before park establishment. She also tells us about how the Eastern Band Cherokees related to the park, and ended up profiting from it. In contrast, Pierce puts much greater emphasis on the political and legislative history of park establishment, and on the fundraising campaign to raise money to buy the park land. While Brown talks of the lumbermen, Pierce tells us of the timber companies and their fight against the park.

I recommend both books, but your choice of which book to read first really depends on your purpose (or interest). I hope the preceding paragraph helps.

Just read this book and it was an interesting read. Good backgound on the struggle to make the Smokies a National Park (I am glad they did).