See Cades Cove on vehicle-free Wednesday at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Hikers and cyclists can enjoy the sights and sounds of Cades Cove without worrying about car traffic on vehicle-free Wednesdays from May through September.
The funding for the Great American Outdoors Act, from which the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has received nearly $61 million for rehabilitation and repair of infrastructure, will run out in 2025, and former U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander believes the renewal should pass the new Congress easily.
“My hope is in 2025 it is (reenacted) virtually unanimously,” said Alexander, who has retired to Blount County and was a major backer of the GAOA.
Alexander explained in a phone interview that the Act has two parts: One established a land and water conservation fund and is permanent. The one that needs renewing ensures that money used from energy development on federal lands and waters goes to national parks and other federal lands.
“Both bills don’t cost taxpayers anything. The government spends money from energy exploration,” Alexander said.
This is the language in the Act that needs renewing: “For FY2021-FY2025, there shall be deposited into the fund an amount equal to 50% of all federal revenues from the development of oil, gas, coal, or alternative or renewable energy on federal lands and waters. Deposited amounts must not exceed $1.9 billion for any fiscal year.”
Then-President Donald Trump signed the Act into law in 2020, but the idea began in 1985, when then-President Ronald Reagan created an advisory commission to review outdoor recreation resources. His Commission on Americans Outdoors called for a dedicated trust. Alexander chaired the Commission when he was governor of Tennessee.
According to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, $13 million in GAOA money was obtained to repair 17 miles of the Foothills Parkway west from Chilhowee Lake to Walland; $15.7 million to repair and rehabilitate Lakeview Drive on the Tennessee side; and $3 million to rehabilitate Heintooga Ridge Road and the Balsam Mountain Campground on the North Carolina side. Work is underway on an $11 million project to rehabilitate a 2-mile section of Newfound Gap Road near Gatlinburg.
THE GAOA Website says the National Park Service has been supported with $1.3 billion per year for five years to make significant enhancements for the public’s enjoyment. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the country.
Alexander, who was a U.S. senator in 2003-21, began working on legislation became the Restore Our Parks Act when Ryan Zinke was secretary of the interior and visited Alexander at his home in Blount County near the park. Zinke, now a Montana congressman, persuaded Trump about the need for extra money for national parks, Alexander said.
Several similar bills were in the Senate and House and had to be reconciled, with the GAOA resulting. At a signing ceremony at the White House, the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, was credited with helping with the success of the legislation.
Alexander said in the interview conducted on Dec. 5 that he worked with her to keep the proposed Act on track. “I knew Trump’s daughter was one staff member he wouldn’t fire,” he said.
Alexander gave Trump a big walking stick at the ceremony. “He was very proud of it,” Alexander said.
Alexander said Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Steve Danes, R-Montana – two senators who were principal sponsors of the Act – remain in the Senate. He said he has not talked with either senator or Trump about the renewal of the funding mechanism, but he feels they will back it.
“If I were in the Senate, which I’m not, I’d get 70 or 80 cosponsors (lined up) before introducing it,” Alexander said. He said most Democrats, but not all Republicans, earlier supported the GAOA.
Dana Soehn, CEO and president of Friends of the Smokies, said the organization in 2020 supported projects that would benefit the national park, although it didn’t actually advocate with Congress to pass the funding. Jim Hart was then the Friends’ top executive and Soehn was a communications specialist with the park.
She said she hasn’t talked with the Friends of the Smokies board about the need for additional funding in the future but suspects board members will want to take the same approach as previously.
Alexander took note of American filmmaker Ken Burns’ theme that national parks are America’s best idea. “This (the GAOA) is the best idea to support our best idea,” Alexander said.
On another subject, Alexander said a book he’s been working on about his political career is almost finished, with presidential historian Jon Meacham having agreed to write the foreword. Meacham helped him find Will Murphy, a former editor at Random House, to assist with the final writing and editing.
A few chapters were produced as a booklet at the dedication of the Howard H. Baker Jr. School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee in May. However, the book is about much more than his relationship with Baker, also a former U.S. senator, as well as presidential chief of staff and U.S. ambassador.
“It is a memoir of what I learned during a serendipitous journey in and out of public life from JFK to Trump,” Alexander said.
So far the book doesn’t have a name. “I want it to be in the best possible shape before taking it to a publisher,” he said.
∎ GOODBYE TO CASH: Cassius Cash, the outgoing superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is being honored for his length of service and vision as he retires from the National Park Service to become the CEO/president of the Yosemite Conservancy in San Francisco in January. In that capacity he will raise money and work to enhance the popular park in California.
Cash has been superintendent since 2014, the second-longest term since the first superintendent, Ross Eakin, who served in 1931-45. Another GSMNP superintendent, Michael Tollefson, who served in 2000-02, also has been chief executive of the Yosemite Conservancy.
Cash is credited with instituting parking fees inside the park, which have generated millions of dollars to help eliminate the park’s backlog of construction projects, along with money from the Great American Outdoors Act. Tributes were paid to him for this work at a reception on Dec. 9 at the Knoxville home of Sharon and Joe Pryse. Sharon Pryse is board chair of Friends of the Smokies.
Cash received an award in 2021 from the National Parks Conservation Association for his Smokies Hikes for Healing program, started after the high-profile deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as a way to talk about racism and discrimination.
He is the first Black superintendent at the park. He and his wife, Vonda, plan to retire eventually to their home in Gatlinburg, he said.
Cash is taking vacation time and preparing for the transition until the end of the year. He has appointed Daniel “Boone” Vandzura, the park’s chief ranger, as interim superintendent for 120 days as the National Park Service determines who the next superintendent will be.
Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor. She may be reached at gvpolitics@hotmail.com.