Back in the 1920′s, logging companies were stripping these mountains bare and one of the motivations for creating a national park in the Smokies was to save what was left of the ancient forests east of the Mississippi.
Horace Kephart, a local writer and avid supporter of a national park, called the old-growth in the Smokies a “last stand of splendid, irreplaceable trees… a real forest, a real wildwood, a real unimproved work of God…”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Click the photo below to see my encounter with one of these ancient trees. Special thanks to Ian MacQueen for camera assistance.
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Video Blogs–Wonderful, thanks for sharing the beauty of the smokies.