100-year-old Smoky Mountains Hiking Club is older than the park | Word from the Smokies
It’s unlikely George and Charlie Barber guessed that anyone would remember their backcountry excursion 100 years later as they led a group of hikers to the summit of Mount Le Conte on a late October day in 1924. But that hike marked the genesis of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club, a group that is not only still around but finishing out its centennial year with 800 members on its rolls.
“I’m just amazed that we’ve been around for 100 years and are really still going strong,” said Steve Dunkin, SMHC’s current president.
When SMHC first started, the park whose namesake it shares was still just an idea. President Calvin Coolidge wouldn’t sign the bill allowing the park’s establishment until May 1926, and Congress wouldn’t authorize full development of public facilities until 1934, after the states of Tennessee and North Carolina transferred 300,000 acres of mountain land to the federal government. SMHC’s early members were a critical part of the movement to make that happen.
“A lot of the peaks in the park are named after hiking club people who were also the political movers and shakers,” Dunkin said. “They were the ones that invited the Department of Interior people down from Washington, D.C., and hiked them up to Gregory Bald and said, ‘Look at this place. It’s wonderful. This needs to be a national park.’”
Those early SMHC members loved the mountains that would later form the park, and they were concerned for their future. Every year, logging companies were denuding more of the landscape.
“They wanted to protect it,” Dunkin said.
The club’s protective posture didn’t end with the park’s establishment. During those early decades, SMHC functioned as an advocacy organization, speaking up and even taking direct action at pivotal points in park history. For example, in 1966, SMHC organized the Save Our Smokies Hike to protest the National Park Service’s plan to build a road connecting Bryson City, North Carolina, to Townsend, Tennessee. The event drew 576 people from 22 states to hike the 27-mile proposed route, and the road was never built.
SMHC was also instrumental in the creation of the 2,200-mile Appalachian National Scenic Trail, 72 miles of which fall within the Smokies. The club held its first AT workshop in 1928. Club members marked out the route through the Smokies and then did the hard work of building the trail. Ever since, SMHC members have reliably carried out the intricate maintenance required to keep the trail, its associated shelters, and its privies safe and functional.
Celebrating the centennial with hikes, square dancing
Throughout 2024, SMHC has kept a full schedule of events designed to connect the club back to its historical roots and to set the stage for its journey toward the future. AT maintainers celebrated by reblazing all 72 miles of the trail’s Great Smoky Mountains section with a fresh round of iconic white rectangles. Club volunteers gathered at the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club Cabin – which is located in the park’s Greenbrier area and served as the group’s clubhouse before being turned over to the park service – to perform some needed maintenance, and three special hiking schedules offered in addition to the club’s usual slate of outings commemorated its legacy.
