The Land Before Time
The setting is the southern Appalachian Trail. But before there was the Appalachian Trail, before there were hikers and a deliberate footpath, there were woods. There were lots, and lots of woods- and there still are. In these woods, there were also people in the Appalachians, long before the AT ever came into existence. Many of the settlements and mountain communities, especially in southern Appalachia, were family farms, coal mining, livestock and agricultural work, and lumber production, among many other human activities. Human-fueled environmental change in the Appalachians began long before Benton MacKaye even conceived his first idea of the AT, and many native animals were killed off or driven out of southern Appalachia by the early 1900s. Mining activities and resource extraction from the lands of the southern Appalachians came with stark, but selective tolls on the environment, since certain parts of the land were exploited more than otherts.
Federal ownership of woodland in the southern Appalachians began around 1911, and Congressional legislature on National Parks and federal land only increased from there on out. Another major play came in 1924, with the creation of the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee, which was eventually responsible for the establishment of two of the most visited parks in the Appalachians- Shenandoah National Park, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The introduction of federal control over a good portion of southern Appalachian land implemented a significant number of regulations on human activities and presence in the mountains. Despite this, many of the human activities in the southern Appalachians continued following the federalization of some land, and the environmental detriment to the land continued to slowly increase.