VOA常速英语:Great Smoky Mountains National Park Celebrates 75th Anniversary

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The official historian for Great Smoky Mountains National Park greets reporters as he feeds livestock on one of the park's living history farms. Not until that chore is done will Ranger Brad Free relax inside the farm's sorghum mill to talk about the park's unique history.

This region was once home to the Cherokee Indians, and Free says that the Smoky Mountains are still a special, almost sacred place for the tribe.

"They believe that their people have been here since day one," he explains. "If you talk to the elders, they say that their Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden, was here in the Smoky Mountains."

Most of the Cherokee eventually were expelled from their idea of paradise on earth. In the winter of 1838, to open up more land for white settlement, the U.S. government rounded up 13,000 Cherokees and forced them to march west more than 1,200 kilometers to the new Indian Territory. Some 4,000 people died along the way.

A few hundred Cherokees managed to elude capture, thanks to the Smoky Mountain's rugged terrain.

"They say there's caves up there they were hiding in, and the U.S. military could not find them up in there. So they never did find them," Free says. "And even today, people try to find these caves, and nobody knows where it was. So the terrain's pretty rough up there."

The descendants of those Cherokees still live along the park's borders.

Settlers made do from the land - and then industry used it up

The living history farm sits on much lower terrain, wedged between steep hills and a rolling stream. It portrays what life was like for the European settlers who called the Smokies home.

Ranger Free says they were remarkably self-reliant and skilled in practical crafts.

"Making baskets, you know. Pot holders or horse shoes or plows… anything like that. I mean, folks were actually making these things on the farm to use them. They made do, or did without, basically is what it is. And that would have been up to the time of the Civil War."

In the years following the Civil War of 1861 to '65, American industry quickly exhausted the natural resources of the northeastern section of the country. The nation began looking farther south and west for the lumber and coal needed to support continued growth.

What most of today's visitors to Smoky Mountains National Park fail to realize is that the forests they enjoy so much are not virgin timber. Free explains that by the early 1900s, much of what is now national park had been stripped bare.

"Seventy-five percent of this - there were no trees standing - and now you see 521,000 acres [210,000 hectares] of beautiful, very young forest."

Many share credit for park's restoration

He adds that today's visitors owe a great debt to park naturalists who've worked tirelessly over the last 75 years to return the Smokies to their original splendor.

"We brought back the river otter. We brought back the elk, the peregrine falcons, brook trout. So many things have happened that have brought the whole ecosystem maybe back to somewhat of what it would have been maybe for the first humans who came into this area."

Free says America also owes a debt to the eclectic collection of people who championed the park's creation in the early 1900s.

The states of North Carolina and Tennessee as well as the federal government pitched in funds, but total donations fell short of the amount needed to purchase land for a park. The remainder, he says, was raised in a truly democratic fashion.

"Local communities raised money. There's stories about school children giving nickels and dimes in their schools to raise money. There were large investors coming in and giving money. Eventually, in 1928, the Little River Lumber Company sold the first track of land, which was about 76,000 acres [30,000 hectares]."

It would be another six years before sufficient land was accumulated to charter a national park, something the United States Congress finally did on June 15, 1934.

Seventy-five years later, Ranger Free says America is still wrestling with how best to use natural and cultural treasures like the Great Smoky Mountains.

"[I hope] that we can also find that balance between nature and humans." He predicts it will be a challenge for future rangers in this area.

"As population increases, as we go to 20 million people a year coming to this park, as surrounding communities are building closer to the park, there's going to be some challenges ahead of us."

Before they begin looking ahead, however, the Park Service will look back to Smoky Mountains National Park's creation. Nearly 100 events celebrating the 75th anniversary will be held in the park and surrounding communities over the next few weeks.