Gatlinburg and the Great Smokies

by Ernie Pyle

GATLINBURG, Tenn., Nov. 5, 1940—

This, I’m sure you will be relieved to know, is the last of the columns on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

This is the biggest and best known National Park east of the Mississippi. Its mountain mass is the highest in the East; its people are as picturesque as any left in America.

And yet friends here say that on their trips out West, and even down below in their own deep South, they frequently talk with people who have never heard of the Smokies.

But that can never happen again. After the current mass of words which this column has fired into the air, anybody who never heard of the Smokies will have to be jailed as a fifth-columnist. This is the final warning.