Logging in the Smokies
An irresistible lure of early 1900s industrialization.
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Use Logging in the Smokies's guide sections to understand how this stop fits into the larger park plan.
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Learn About the Park
The old-growth forests of the Great Smoky Mountains proved an irresistible lure as industrialization took hold in the early 1900s, and soon large-scale logging was taking place. Lumbering boom towns grew in places like Elkmont, Smokemont, Proctor, and Tremont. Clear-cutting stripped bare huge swaths of forest, and within a few decades local conservationists were organizing to try to save the remaining 20 percent of the original forest from destruction.