{"id":272,"date":"2009-03-10T18:40:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-11T00:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southerner.net\/blog\/?p=272"},"modified":"2020-05-12T22:47:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T22:47:39","slug":"secret-vistas-the-great-smoky-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/10\/secret-vistas-the-great-smoky-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Vistas: The Great Smoky Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>National Park Celebrates 75th Anniversary<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"imagebox\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" border=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.locustfork.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/tunnel1.jpg?w=560\" alt=\"tunnel1.jpg\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.locustfork.net\/photo\/\"><small>Glynn Wilson<\/small><\/a><\/div>\n<p><small>A rock tunnel beckons as you enter the Great Smoky Mountains National Park&#8230;<\/small><\/p>\n<p><strong>by Glynn Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS &#8212; When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood at Newfound Gap with one foot in North Carolina and the other in Tennessee on Sept. 2, 1940 at the official opening of the <a href=\" http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/grsm\/parknews\/75th-anniversary.htm\">Great Smoky Mountains National Park<\/a>, the visibility into the dark blue ridges ranged about 80 miles. By the year 2000, soot and ozone from automobiles and the Tennessee Valley Authority&#8217;s coal-fired power plants in East Tennessee had so polluted the air that on a good day, you could only see for about 12 miles.<\/p>\n<p>Due to cleaner cars and smoke stack scrubbers on TVA&#8217;s three nearby coal-fired power plants, and a 10 percent drop in the number of people and cars passing through the park over the past decade, perhaps, you can now see for about 14 miles, a slight improvement of a couple of miles, according to park spokesman Bob Miller.<\/p>\n<p>To read the entire few features, with photos, visit our sister site, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.locustfork.net\/2009\/03\/10\/secret-vistas-the-great-smoky-mountains\/\">The Locust Fork News-Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Park Celebrates 75th Anniversary Glynn Wilson A rock tunnel beckons as you enter the Great Smoky Mountains National Park&#8230; by Glynn Wilson GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS &#8212; When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood at Newfound Gap with one foot in&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/10\/secret-vistas-the-great-smoky-mountains\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[93,162],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-secret-vistas","tag-great-smoky-mountains","tag-tennessee-valley-authority"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/tunnel1.jpg?fit=522%2C318","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2zaJq-4o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5519,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/5519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}