Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Deep Creek, nestled in the island of wilderness that is
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
This is one of the places that inspired Horace Kephart,
prolific outdoor writer and early park advocate.
Kephart came to the mountains of western North Carolina in 1904.
Submerging himself in the wilderness, he became an expert outdoorsman
and chronicler of the ways of the mountain people who were now
his neighbors.
His books Camping and Woodcraft and Our Southern Highlanders
are each considered prominent works of their genres.
And now, the Great Smoky Mountains Association is pleased to be the publisher
of a previously unpublished Kephart novel, Smoky Mountain Magic.
Horace Kephart started working on Smoky Mountain Magic in 1921,
doing research.
He completed the manuscript in 1929, and all the while,
while he was working on this, he was writing other articles,
but more importantly he was working carefully with so many other
people on the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
and especially with his good friend George Masa.
In 1929, he completed the manuscript while living in Bryson City, NC.
After his death his wife Laura received the manuscript as part of the estate.
May 1st of 2009, we had a Horace Kephart day in Bryson City.
At that time, I mentioned to Superintendent Dale Ditmanson of
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that I had this manuscript and I was
considering talking to publishers.
A few weeks later in a conversation, the superintendent asked if
we would consider the Great Smoky Mountains Association as the publishers
of the novel.
Shortly after that the decision was made that absolutely the Association
would be publishers of Horace Kephart's Smoky Mountain Magic.
So, 80 years upon completion, Horace and Laura Kephart's dream of
having this novel published has been met.
The area that Horace Kephart writes about in Smoky Mountain Magic is
basically the Deep Creek area. And it's obvious to the reader that every
word he writes about the Deep Creek area, he walked that area.
He talks about Nicks Nest. We know that Horace was there.
The absolute beautiful trails, the road, which is still part of the trail
that goes through the Deep Creek area.
We know he walked it.
He lived it.
The characters he just so beautifully weaves into the story of mystery and intrigue
in the Smoky Mountains,
are people that he respected when he wrote about.
He writes about some mountain people that are questionable.
He also writes and honors the wonderful people who lived in that area.
He talks about the Cherokees and the Cherokee stories of mystery.
The main character's name is John Cabarrus, and
it's a young Horace Kephart in my opinion.
The love interest in the book, in my opinion, is his wife Laura.
We know that Horace lived the story.
We know so much about Horace and how he felt about his life and
the area that he lived by the writings of Smoky Mountain Magic.
It was very important for me that in finding a publisher for Smoky Mountain
Magic that the monies from the book would find their way back into the park.
They're Horace's words, Horace's thoughts, Horace's novel,
and it has to benefit the park.
And it has.
Horace Kephart was killed in a car accident in 1931, just three years
before the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established.
Even so, he knew his dream for the park was materializing.
Kephart is buried on a hilltop overlooking Bryson City,
near the Great Smoky Mountains that he loved.
A boulder moved there by friends, marks his grave.
Shortly thereafter, the local Boy Scouts erected a memorial to Kephart
up on Deep Creek.
You can still visit the memorial, a mill stone tucked into the edge of a
small clearing near campsite 57, about 6 miles up Deep Creek Trail.
As the engraved plaque reads, this was where
"Horace Kephart, dean of American campers and one of the principal
founders of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
pitched his last permanent camp."
Nearby is the area Kephart referred to as "Nicks Nest" which he used as a
principal setting in the Smoky Mountain Magic novel.
To discover Smoky Mountain Magic, Horace Kephart's novel of
adventure and romance in the Great Smoky Mountains,
pick up a copy at the GSMA website,
or at visitor centers throughout the park