WILDERNESS HALTS PARK ROAD CONSTRUCTION

While the National Park Service was making Newfound Gap Road more scenic, others advocating the preservation of wild areas also began influencing the motor road system of GRSM. The notion that wilderness was worth preserving emerged in the United States during the 1920s, largely due to the efforts of Aldo Leopold. As an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, Leopold worked tirelessly to convince both his superiors and the nation at large that wilderness was essential to American culture and thus should be protected from development.

Bear Jam in the Great Smokies, ca. 1950 (GRSM)

Leopold's wilderness philosophy soon found advocates within the federal government and society at large. Robert Marshall, Director of the Forestry Division of the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, and Benton McKaye, a regional planner for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the originator of the Appalachian Trail concept, both promoted the preservation of undeveloped areas during the early 1930s. Such ideas also spread to the Smokies during this period, just as the Park Service proposed additional road construction projects in GRSM.

The Asheville, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce promoted construction of a "Skyway" along the crest of the Smokies in 1932. The proposed road would run along the ridge of the mountains much like Shenandoah's Skyline Drive. In July of that year GRSM officials announced that the Park would go ahead with this project, and in November and December the Bureau of Public Roads inspected the proposed route.

Top: Protest signs erected cat the beginning of uncompleted Northshore Road. 1996 (HAER); bottom: Rock slides continue to plague Foothills Parkway and other roads, illustrating the fragile environmental conditions of the area. (GRSM)

In response to such actions, in 1934 a local lawyer named Harvey Broome invited Marshall and McKaye to Knoxville, Tennessee to organize opposition to the construction of several proposed highways along the Appalachian divide, including the Skyway. At the meeting the three men agreed to mail an "Invitation to Help Organize a Group to Preserve the American Wilderness" to those known to be concerned. This mailing resulted in the founding one year later of the Wilderness Society, one of the nation's leading environmental organizations, and it also led to the defeat of the proposed Skyway along the crest of the Smokies.

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