By DEREK HODGES

Staff Writer

NEWFOUND GAP — National dignitaries, state officials and even Dolly Parton appropriately stood with one foot in North Carolina and one foot in Tennessee, the two states that encompass Great Smoky Mountains National Park, as they marked the impressive 75th year of the park.

Since President Roosevelt stood on the same spot in 1940 to dedicate the park, it has grown to become the most popular in the national system, a major economic engine and a place to glimpse the raw beauty of America.

Speakers from Parton to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar paid homage to that history from the podium on the Rockefeller Memorial.

“It is indeed a time to rejoice. It’s a time to remember,” Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said. “To celebrate our past and look to the future has been our mantra throughout this anniversary year. We are so thankful today for so many. For those of you who gave so much, our heartfelt thanks.”

Indeed, the message of paying tribute to those who sacrificed at the park’s creation and preserving the land as a national treasure has run through all the 75th anniversary celebrations like a thread through a mountain quilt. It also served to tie together Wednesday’s messages.

“Many people sacrificed a great deal to create this park,” U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., said. “The people are what makes this region of the United States so special. People come here because of the great beauty we have, but they stay here because of the people.”

Though the event was his first visit to the Smokies, Salazar tipped his trademark cowboy hat to the Smokies’ history, from its creation at the height of the Great Depression.

“America’s best ideas have often come when our nation has faced its most difficult circumstances,” Salazar said. “With the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, our nation determined once again to take bold action. We must renew our commitment to preserving our nation’s beautiful landscapes for generations to come. There are new challenges that we must confront. America has always risen to a challenge. We know that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Big thinking time and time again has led to America’s best ideas. We must build a new legacy of conservation for the 21st Century and those to come.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., outlined some of the most important of those conservation efforts to come.

“So what should we hope for as we look to the 100th anniversary?” Alexander asked. “I hope we have finished cleaning the air so that, instead of seeing smog, we can always see the blue haze about which the Cherokee and Dolly sang; and that we will have done more to celebrate the way of life of families who lived here; that we will have become better students of the remarkable environmental diversity here—more different kinds of trees than in all of Europe, new species discovered every year; that we do a better job of creating picturesque entrances and encouraging conservation easements along the park boundaries to protect the wildlife and the magnificent views.”

If there was a second theme to all the comments Wednesday, it was praise for Parton, which proved to be the only guaranteed applause line for each of the speakers. Parton, who donned a brightly colored outfit that may well have helped attract a bee “the size and color of a watermelon” that bedeviled her throughout the proceedings, was upbeat as she offered her comments on what she said would be her last day as ambassador of the park’s 75th anniversary.

“I’m just proud to be here. I’m part of these hills,” Parton told the crowd. “It has been quite an honor to serve as ambassador for the 75th anniversary of the Smokies. I’ve worked hard; I didn’t just sit on my Metcalf Bottoms. You’d have to be from the Smokies to get that.”

Parton recalled her childhood in the Smokies in pointing out that the mountains have meant a livelihood for local folks long before they were part of the park.

“These mountains are givers, not takers. It was these mountains that inspired us, that put food on our tables, that gave us everything we had,” Parton said.

n dhodges@themountainpress.com