Hugh Morton:Conservationist and Capitalist?

Hugh Morton and Bear

Scenic View of the Peaks of Grandfather Mountain

“The right-of-way thus provided... will

produce what is probably the most

scenic section of the Parkway, but without

interrupting the spectacular wilderness

characteristics.”- Hugh Morton in Asheville Citizen-

Times article: State is Holding Title to Middle Right-Of-Way Across Grandfather Mountain

Conservationist?

Saving the Scenery?

“The Lord put it there and it would be like taking a blade to the

Mona Lisa if you gash it up.”

Hugh Morton in National Park Service, Hearing Blue Ridge

Parkway Grandfather Mountain Vicinity

Blue Ridge Parkway Viaduct

Defender of the Mountain?

(Whisnant 315) (Whisnant 307)

Capitalist?

“By the time the Parkway routing question was finally

resolved in 1968, the mountain that Morton ever afterward insisted ‘didn’t

deserve to be conquered’ by the NPS had been partially timbered and paved, crowned with a swinging bridge and

several decidedly nonnatural structures, and

swarmed with visitors.” - Whisnant 289 Grandfather Mountain Advertiseme

nt

Timber Cutting by Linville Lumber

“Grandfather Mountain has been badly mauled and

manhandled by the Linville company”

- Samuel T. Kelsey as cited in Whisnant 281

Exploiting the Mountain?

Grandfather Mountain Bears

Twinned with the ubiquitous swinging bridge was the

mountain’s new mascot, a black bear named Mildred, who arrived from Zoo Atlanta in 1966, at once

evoking the (now safely captured) wilderness of the

“unconquered” mountain and the warm fuzziness of

sentimentalized, marketable nature.

- Whisnant 289

Marketing Mildred?

The Land Exchange

Is Conservationismcompatible

with Capitalism?

Admission Sign to Grandfather Mountain

Works Cited** All materials without parenthetical citations have been linked to their

original source through their caption**

National Park Service. Hearing Blue Ridge Parkway Grandfather Mountain Vicinity. Lands Files, Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters, Asheville, NC, 1961. Print.

Whisnant, Anne. Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Press, 2006. Print.