Park Celebrates 75th Anniversary

In recognition of the park’s June 15, 1934 enabling legislation, the staff, volunteers and partners at Great Smoky Mountains National Park staged a three-day series of events this past weekend to showcase three of the most popular areas of the Smokies.

Altogether, almost 9,000 people attended one or more of the events, which included a Knoxville Symphony Concert, a park open house, and the ground-breaking for a new partner-funded visitor center.

On Saturday, June 13th, approximately 7,000 people attended an outdoor concert by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in the Cades Cove Historic District. Tennessee’s Senator Lamar Alexander performed with the symphony as a guest pianist. The concert was a recreation of a similar but smaller event held during the park’s 50th anniversary in 1984, at which event then-Governor Alexander also performed.  At the conclusion of his set, the senator was recognized by the park as an honorary park ranger for his staunch support of the protection of the Smokies. Approximately 100 park staff and 60 volunteers were involved in traffic management, security, parking, visitor services, media relations and EMS. The concert was sponsored by the Friends of the Smokies.

On Sunday, June 14th, almost 1,000 people came for an open house at park headquarters, a beautiful, hand-constructed stone building completed in 1940 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. In preparation for the event, the park’s facility management staff restored the building’s lobby – which had been retrofitted over the years into several offices – to its original appearance when it served as the park visitor center from 1940 until 1960.  Open house attendees were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at all the park’s activities, including facility management and design, administration, natural and cultural resource management, law enforcement and emergency services, fire management, resource education and the Great Smoky Mountains Association.

On June 15th, the actual date of the park’s establishment, the park and its partners symbolically broke ground for the new 7,000-square-foot, LEED-certified Oconaluftee Visitor Center, located near the park’s Cherokee, North Carolina, entrance.  The new building will replace a 1,100-square-foot CCC-built facility originally designed to be a ranger station and magistrate courtroom. The new center will be built without any federal investment. using $2.5 million provided by the Great Smoky Mountains Association to construct the building, plus $.5 million from the Friends of the Smokies for 3,000 square feet of cultural history exhibits and interpretive and orientation media. Besides the ground breaking, visitors were treated to performances of traditional Appalachian music, story-telling and series of Cherokee Indian dances demonstrated by the “Warriors of Anikituhwa.” Representative Heath Shuler was also on-hand to kick-off the event.

A slide-show of each of these events is posted to the web:

Cades Cove concert:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/39519679@N07/sets/72157619837274584/

Headquarters open house: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39519679@N07/sets/72157619751309243/

Oconaluftee VC groundbreaking: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39519679@N07/

While park staff and volunteers were working to manage these events, other staff and volunteers were overseeing the operation of a shuttle bus system that provides the only access to the public to see the annual breeding display of the Photinus carolinus fireflies. The native beetle species has evolved a synchronous flashing behavior that is nothing short of astonishing to watch. Seeing the insects has become so popular that serious safety issues, parking problems, resource impacts, and conflicting uses eventually compelled the Park to implement a mandatory shuttle bus system to the Elkmont area, where the phenomenon is best viewed.  During the nine nights of the display, shuttles transported just over 8,900 people.