This interpretive sign describing both the Smokies natural haze and the impact of air pollution on the park are among the numerous signs and exhibits targeted for removal from Great Smoky Mountains National Park by a Trump executive order. Save Our Signs
This story was originally published by Compass.
GATLINBURG — The Trump Administration’s war against “woke” appears poised to extend to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Ten interpretive signs within the park referencing slavery, science and the Cherokee are included in a leaked dataset of national park educational features subject to removal, according to a Compass review of the now publicly available document.
The signs are subject to removal per the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order from President Donald Trump, issued in March 2025.
Pierce Gentry at WUOT first reported the inclusion of the Smokies in a massive leaked database that lists hundreds of Department of the Interior sites with signs, exhibits, films and publications that the administration deems offensive.
The Department of the Interior and National Park Service have already removed signs from park-service units elsewhere, including displays at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia that highlighted the people enslaved by George Washington during the Revolutionary War era. A lawsuit is pending.
The Walker Sisters Cabin is among the dozens of historic buildings in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Friends of the Smokies
This story was originally published by Compass.
GATLINBURG — It takes a lot of work to keep things looking the way they used to look.
A small army of uniquely skilled artisans labors through the seasons and decades to maintain, preserve and conserve the dozens of historical structures in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Restoration projects have included Cable Mill flume and Elijah Oliver cabin in Cades Cove, and the Walker Sisters Cabin in Little Greenbrier.
It takes talent and an old-fashioned eye for detail in cabins, barns, millraces, schoolhouses and churches. It also takes a lot of money.
The Boyd Foundation in February announced a $750,000 donation to Friends of the Smokies that will push a key historic-preservation endowment to $9 million.
OAK RIDGE — I went to Russia in 2000 on one of the most extraordinary trips of my life. It was a long time ago, and a generation has passed, but I was left with many enduring and positive impressions of the country and its people.
The newspaper I worked for, The Daily Times in Maryville, paid for my trip to Moscow, then to Siberia, (and back again, to my surprise) to cover a contingent of Blount County politicos/bureaucrats and Oak Ridge DOE types visiting a far eastern Russian town, Zheleznogorsk, that had long been home to both nuclear and chemical weapons processing facilities.
The goal, under the flag of Sister Cities, was ultimately geared toward introducing alternative commerce and industry to this forgotten town so the potentially catastrophic expertise would not be exported abroad. The temptation was surely there. These were people with advanced degrees who now lived in a place where a lot of people had never eaten in a restaurant.
KNOXVILLE — Hellbender Press took home two awards from the 2021 Golden Press Card contest sponsored by the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists.
Hellbender Press was recognized with two first-place awards for East Tennessee digital journalism: The Hal DeSelm Papers and Requiem for the Lord God Bird.
