A resolution recognizing and commending the people of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the park.

Whereas, in the 1920s, groups of citizens and officials in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee displayed enormous foresight in recognizing the potential benefits of a national park in the Southern Appalachian Mountains;

Whereas the location of the park that became the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was selected from among the finest examples of the most scenic and intact mountain forests in the Southeastern United States;

Whereas the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was the product of more than 2 decades of determined effort by leaders of communities across Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee;

Whereas the State legislatures and Governors of North Carolina and Tennessee exercised great vision in appropriating the funding that was used, along with funding from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund, to purchase more than 400,000 acres of private land that became part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park;

Whereas the citizens of communities surrounding the Great Smoky Mountains National Park generously contributed funding for land acquisition to bring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park into being;

Whereas more than 1,100 families and other property owners were called upon to sacrifice their farms and homes for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations that would visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park;

Whereas the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established as a completed park by the Act entitled An Act to establish a minimum area for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and for other purposes, approved June 15, 1934 (16 U.S.C. 403g);

Whereas the Great Smoky Mountains National Park covers approximately 521,621 acres of land in the States of Tennessee and North Carolina, making it the largest protected area in the Eastern United States;

Whereas the Great Smoky Mountains National Park provides sanctuary for the most diverse flora and fauna of any national park in the temperate United States, and preserves an unparalleled collection of historic structures as a time capsule of Appalachian culture during the 19th and early 20th centuries;

Whereas, on September 2, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Great Smoky Mountains National Park;

Whereas the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been the most popular national park in the United States since it opened, and attracts between 9,000,000 and 10,000,000 visitors each year, making it the most visited of the 58 national parks in the United States; and

Whereas visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park contribute more than $700,000,000 to the local economy each year, resulting in more than 14,000 jobs in North Carolina and Tennessee: Now, therefore, be it