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In a place where nature’s unspoiled beauty and the charm of a
simpler time draw millions of visitors from across the country a year,
you might be shocked to see what some visitors are leaving behind,
and it’s not pretty.
In the historic churches, schools, and cabins of
Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
vandalism has left it’s ugly mark, often in the form of graffiti
thoughtlessly written, painted, or carved into the wood.
It’s been a source of frustration for preservationists
and park rangers for years,
but park ranger Jamie Sanders and her fellow park staff and
volunteers have turned to social media to nab some vandals.
Sanders: The Cades Cove area of the Great Smoky Mountains National
Park is one of the most visited areas of our nation’s national parks.
Here in Cades Cove we have a significant amount of historic buildings,
Great Smoky Mountains in general is home to the largest
collection of log structures in the eastern side of the U.S.
Just to the Cades Cove area we get approximately
2 million visitors a year.
And of those visitors, only a small percentage
are actually vandalizing our structures.
It’s a cumulative effect of over the years of all the damage
that has been done.
Alot of these buildings are made out of chestnut and
other tree species that, you just can’t get that wood anymore.
And because of the historic nature of these buildings
we’re not able to remove the graffiti,
especially some of the ones that are carved in and
are written in paint or permanent markers.
That’s pretty much there permanently.
I’ve used several of the social media sites to be able
to catch numerous visitors.
We’ve got approximately 15 cases right now,
not all through social media,
but most of them have been able to be identified 0:01:53.150,0:01:55.000 through the internet.
Narrator: Last year, Sanders used public social media sites to
track down two sisters who had written their names on a beam
at the Henry Whitehead cabin.
The Whitehead cabin has been referred to as
“the finest log home in Cades Cove.”
Sanders also located two subjects responsible for graffiti on the
wall of the Primitive Baptist Church,
one of the oldest framed structures in the park.
Sanders’ efforts resulted in confessions to each of these crimes,
and a number of other cases pending.
Vandals face the possibility of heavy fines, civil damages,
and even jail time.
Sanders: It distracts the visitors from being able to look at the
building and appreciate the history associated with the building.
We want you to be able to imagine that simple way of life before
we had television and plumbing,
when it was just you and your family at night and
nothing else for entertainment.
And our visitors are not able to recapture that now.
They come in and they’re distracted with all the graffiti
and they can’t imagine that life anymore,
and that’s what we’re losing.
Narrator: Visitors who witness someone vandalizing a park building should report the crime by calling 1-865-436-1230.