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The Leconte Lodge: A Lens For The Evolution And Development Of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Lindsay D. Lanois

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Officially established in 1934, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park originated as part of a widespread cultural trend towards outdoor recreation, national tourism, and the federal government's assumption of responsibility for land conservation. However, the area of Tennessee and North Carolina selected by the federal government for the national park was not a purely unsettled landscape. Not only did the land serve as home to approximately ten permanent agricultural communities, but it also featured several hotels and lodges inspired by the burgeoning twentieth-century tourism industry. Beginning as a rudimentary hiking cabin constructed in 1925 and evolving throughout the 1930s, the …