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Boosters, Bureaucrats, Politicians And Philanthropists: Coalition Building In The Establishment Of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Daniel Smith Pierce

Doctoral Dissertations

The movement to establish a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee in the 1920s and 1930s was an exceedingly lengthy and complex process. In the seventeen years between the beginning of the park movement and the dedication of the park supporters had to overcome a number of serious obstacles raising over $10 million during difficult economic times, purchasing over six thousand individual tracts of land, overcoming the resistance of well-financed opposition, and weathering the storms of political battles and economic depression that threatened the movement at almost every turn. In order to overcome the …