“Tearing Up Your Community

Does Something to Your Spirit”

Displacement, Identity, and Lost Communities in the Great

Smokies and Blue Ridge Parkway

“Synergistic Pathways: Thinking About Collaboration as a

Catalyst for Advancing Environmental History”
Zoey S. Hanson,
American Society for Environmental History, Denver, 2024
 “the voices of residents in rural
communities can reveal unique
understandings for both historians and
the public of the history of our public
lands. By utilizing the history as it is
remembered by local communities and
groups, environmental histories of the
national parks becomes significantly
more accessible and genuine.” Courtesy of US National Park Service,
Department of the Interior, “History of the
NPS Arrowhead,
https://www.nps.gov/wrst/learn/historycultur
e/history-of-the-nps-arrowhead.htm
Brinegar Cabin, Courtesy of US National Park Service, Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/articles/550138.htm#4/31.80/-78.13
The original Mabry Mill and the
Mabry’s home

Courtesy of Anne Mitchell Whisnant, “Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway.https://docsouth.unc.edu/blueridgeparkway/
The The final result of “Mabry
destruction Mill,” the most visited site
of the
on the Parkway
Mabry’s
home and
construction
of Mabry
lake
 Flat Top Manor Craft
Moses Cone’s Manor
Center

Courtesy of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, “Shop in Moses Cone Manor”
https://www.southernhighlandguild.org/mosesconemanor/ Courtesy of Blue Ridge Country Magazine, https://blueridgecountry.com/newsstand/magazine/flat-top-
manor-restorations/
 “This is going to be quite a climb for me. But
I desperately want to go back to the old
home place where I was born. I’ve got one
specific thing that I want to see one more
time. And that is an old chestnut log that was
laying on the ground when I was about five
or six years old… [upon finding the log] …that
there is my log. We used to have to carry
water from that spring there to the house.
So, I used to come down to the spring and I’d
set my bucket down and play on this tree.
And I’d be gone about a half hour. Grandma
would come out the back door… ‘hey
Vernon, bring that water on here, I need it.’ I
don’t know why I fell in with this tree like I
did. I’ve got to the point now; I want to know
if it’s going to deteriorate before I do or not.
And I believe it’s going to outlast me.”

-Matt Hubbard, Rock Castle Home, 00:03:43. Courtesy of VPM Documentaries, “Rock Castle Home”
 “The mountains were intimately connected to the
mountaineer identity, and with the loss of their homes,
generational ties, and communities, most mountaineers
were reported by their descendants as “never the same.”

Courtesy of VPM Documentaries, “Rock Castle Home”

Photographed By Cosmos Mariner, September 9, 2018,
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=162097
Courtesy of Smoky Mountain Historical Society, https://smhstn.org/

“Sometimes, descendants come

from across the United States,
traveling vast distances to see old
community family and friends on
mountain homeland. These
reunions exemplify how deeply
ingrained the mountain lands and
communities are to mountaineer
identity, even for those who never
lived in the communities.”

Courtesy of UNC Asheville Special Collections and University Archives, Asheville, NC.
 Courtesy of the US National Park Service, Department of the Interior, “Great Smoky Mountains,” https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.

COURTESY OF THE US NATIONAL PARK SERVICE,

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, “GREAT SMOKY
MOUNTAINS,” HTTPS://WWW.NPS.GOV/GRSM/INDEX.HTM.
Courtesy of the US National Park Service, Department of
the Interior, “Blue Ridge Parkway,”
https://www.nps.gov/blri/index.htm.

Courtesy of the US National Park Service, Department of the Interior, “Blue Ridge Parkway,” https://www.nps.gov/blri/index.htm.
 “Tearing Up Your Community
Does Something to Your Spirit”

Displacement, Identity, and Lost Communities in the Great

Smokies and Blue Ridge Parkway

“Synergistic Pathways: Thinking About Collaboration as a

Catalyst for Advancing Environmental History”
Zoey S. Hanson, American Society for Environmental History, Denver, 2024