This is the first in a series of articles highlighting materials in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, which the Harts recently donated to UNC Asheville’s Special Collections. This article highlights works related to one of Bill and Alice Hart’s favorite pastimes: hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains.
In the introduction to his 2009 book, 3000 Miles in the Great Smokies, Bill Hart described the importance of boyhood family camping trips in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Initially introduced to day hikes by his father, he became an avid hiking and camping enthusiast. The more he hiked in the Smokies, the more curious he became about not only the actual trails he traversed, but also the history and culture of the people who had lived there:
As the frequency of my walks in the Smokies increased, each visit began to take on a different meaning. I could not pass flowers and shrubs without having questions about their identities. Remains of old homesteads, outlines of old fields and rustic cemeteries led to wonderment about patterns of settlement and early life in the Smokies. Old roads, faint paths and abandoned rail grades caused me to wonder where they led and what secrets they held. Mountain peaks and place names bespoke of people and events in the past. In an effort to gain a layman’s knowledge about the Smokies, I began to read about the history, flora, fauna, lore, and music of the area and satisfied some of my curiosity.
Indeed, Bill’s effort to gain a “layman’s knowledge” of the Smokies was a factor in he and his wife Alice curating and creating a massive personal library for over 50 years, one that scholars sought out and that is now at UNC Asheville. This post, the first of many, will focus on the Smokies hiking content in the Bill and Alice Hart Collection, and further posts will continue to highlight the wide variety of materials in this extensive collection.
Smoky Mountains Hiking Club Handbooks
The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club (SMHC) was founded in 1924, two years before the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By 1926 the SMHC began to publish an annual Handbook which listed group hikes and other SMHC events during each year. The Bill and Alice Hart Collection contains nearly ninety copies of the SMHC Handbook dating from the first one in 1926 through 2018 – a nearly complete set with just a few years missing.
Each volume of the SMHC Handbook is a guide to SMHC hikes and events. Included are a schedule of hikes throughout the year with descriptions of each hike and the group leader (or leaders) for each hike, other scheduled club events such as fish fries, educational lectures, short essays by club members about hiking and the outdoors, general guides and insights into various places in the Park, photographs, maps, and information about the club’s members and leaders. The articles and hike descriptions in the handbooks portray a strong sense of camaraderie among the members, a shared sense of stewardship about the trails and the park, and often a wry sense of humor, as seen in the captions for these photos of a bear and a boomer (a red squirrel) from the 1939 Handbook:
The Smoky Mountains Hiking Club remained active and continued to lead hikes and host group activities even during World War II. This entry from the 20th Anniversary edition of the Handbook in 1944 discusses not only wartime rationing but also shows a regular feature in each issue of the Handbook – the club’s Code of Ethics:
Guide to the Great Smokies
Several of the many gems in the Hart Collection are the 1933 Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the 1935 revised edition of the Guide, both written by George McCoy and George Masa. And while the 1935 edition no longer lists Masa as a co-author, his photographs still grace the pages of this small and highly informative volume.
Hiking Trails of the Smokies
Due to his considerable experience hiking the Smokies, Bill Hart was asked to contribute some trail descriptions to Hiking Trails of the Smokies, published in 1994 by the Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association. Bill described about 60 miles of trails in the book, and this link goes to his description of the Beech Gap Trail (please click on link to open the narrative). In addition to describing the hike itself, Bill’s narrative places the trail in historical context. He describes Ira McGee’s mill and the railroad lines that were extended into this section of the Smokies in 1915 for logging, and also notes that the Civilian Conservation Corps had a camp in 1934-41 where Round Bottom Creek flows into Straight Fork, near the Beech Gap Trail. The hike is not merely a hike on a lovely Smokies trail, it’s also a trip through the past.
To watch a video of Bill Hart discussing these works and other materials from the Great Smokies part of the Hart Collection, please click on this link. This was recorded in the Hart’s private library prior to transferring the collection to UNC Asheville, but we have retained the original order that the Harts used to organize their collection.
The Bill and Alice Hart Collection is open to all, and we encourage you to contact Special Collections to make an appointment to spend time with this marvelous collection. Please contact us at speccoll@unca.edu to make an appointment. We look forward to seeing you soon!
– Gene Hyde and Ashley Whittle
