President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation establishing The Great Smoky Mountains National Park on June 15, 1934. He spoke at the dedication of the park on September 2, 1940.
It all began in 1908 when President Theodore Roosevelt felt that natural resources needed to be managed by the federal government. Two people stood out who advocated for establishing an organization in charge of the national parks. They were Stephen Mather and Horace Albright who later became the first and second directors of the National Park Service.
These two men want to overcome those in the government who were against the National Park Service and to get public support for the National Park Service. They began to promote the benefits of having one organization in charge of national parks.
Mather and Albright gained the support of influential organizations such as railroad and automobile companies, the Sierra Club, and influential individuals such as Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. National magazines printed articles about the national parks and encouraged people to visit them. Mather got seventeen railroads to publish a book with pictures and articles about the parks and sent them to each member of Congress. In 1915, legislators from California and Utah sponsored the legislation that led to the National park Service Organic Act. Mather became the first director and started creating a system of national parks.
Mather promoted the parks using advertising and publicity to get support for the parks. One thing he did was to get the Post Office to issue stamps featuring the different parks. Franklin D. Roosevelt was an avid stamp collector who recognized Mather’s efforts. Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior was a big advocate of the national parks and announced that 1934 would be National park Year. Roosevelt, Ickes, and the postmaster general (James Farley) discussed creating a series of park stamps.
The NPS Director, Arno B. Cammerer asked George Grant, the chief photographer of the National Park Service to select photos from artists that could be used as designs and engraving for ten stamps.
It was decided that ten parks would be featured on stamps ranging from one cent to ten cents. They were Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Acadia, Zion, Glacier, and the Great Smoky Mountains. There were a lot of photos to be looked at and decided upon. It only took 6 months from the beginning discussion to the creation of the last stamp! Each stamp was one color and the color for each stamp was different and printing. The lettering was white. Six stamps were horizontal and four were vertical. All of the engravings were done by the Bureau of Engraving.
The ten-cent Great Smoky Mountains stamp was the first US stamp designed by a woman (Esther Richards). A special one-sheet of the ten-cent Great Smoky Mountains stamp went on sale in Asheville, NC in 1937.
Class Activities:
- Research national parks. Pretend the rest of the class is Congress and you have to convince them to financially support your favorite park.
- Create a brochure of your favorite park. Include facts and pictures.
- What other parks should be featured on a stamp and why?
- Design a stamp for another national park.
References:
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/stamps-parks-and-a-president
https://www.mysticstamp.com/Products/United-States/749/USA/
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