Cut and Run

Cut and Run. Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You hardly ever left a tree of any size standing and all the little 'uns was torn down. , Raymer Brackin, Standing her in 1910 you would have seen a far different landscape than today. You might have seen the Champion Fibre Company logging the mountainside opposite you. Railroads crisscrossed the nearly cut-bare slope. Steam engine smoke clouded the view, and the screeching, clanging, and banging of timber and rail operations echoed across the hills., Champion was just one of many companies logging these mountains. In fact, lumber companies owned 85 percent of the land that later became Great Smoky Mountains National Park; about 65 percent was actually logged. Wood from these slopes served many uses: spruce went into World War I biplanes, hemlock bark was used to tan hides, and chestnut paneled staterooms in steamships that sailed the world's oceans., (captions) , Huge chestnut, hemlock and oak trees stood tall on the mountainsides. With seemingly inexhaustible timber resources, loggers in the early 1900s held a cut-and-run attitude, quickly cutting trees so they could move to the next stand. Soil erosion and forest fires added to the devastation. Soon national park proponents decried the destruction and helped buy the lands for the new park., Champion Fibre Company Mills, 1920s, Skid roads and railroads left their scars on the mountain slopes., Loggers, some with families, often lived in rail-portable housing known as "set-off houses.", In the 1920s, lumber companies dominated the Smokies' landscape., (map legend) , Lumber , Private , Mining - Other Commercial , Champion Fibre Co