Arnold Guyot's New Gap in the 'Geographer's Range'
On a hot summer day in 1859, a sweaty North Carolinian slashed through thick heath and trees to the high crest of the Smokies. He was a local man named Robert Collins, one of a few locals who had any interest in trekking so high in the steep mountains for the dubious reason of guiding an “outlander” to “the top of Smoky.” The sunburned man he was leading that day—Arnold Guyot—was a mountain man himself, although not from these parts.
Guyot was Switzerland-born and familiar with the lofty regions of the Alps, and he spoke with a thick accent. He and Collins were on a scientific mission to measure and name some of the highest peaks of the range. They both struggled with the physical ascent of the mountains, with thick vegetation, summer heat, and the not uncommon severe afternoon thunderstorms with lightning. And, somewhat humorously, they also struggled with understanding each other’s unique version of the English language. They couldn’t know it at the time, but the difficult work they were doing in exploring and measuring the high peaks and gaps of the Smokies would lay the foundation for the opening of the wilderness of Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the world some seven and-a-half decades later. Guyot, Collins, and other early Smoky Mountain explorer/geographers, through their efforts in measuring, mapping and naming the major ridges and peaks of the Smokies, would be immortalized in Smoky Mountain history.
Arnold Guyot’s journey from the majestic Alps of Switzerland to the humid green crests of the Smokies is an epic journey. As a young student in Europe, he was nurtured by important mentors such as Swiss geographer Louis Agassiz. His teachers imbued him with a centuries-old European preoccupation with the geography of the world and with exploring and mapping the unknown. That epic European thirst for geographic discoveries from the 14th century onward is ably summed up in the words of French scientist and mathematician Jean Fernel, who commented on the excitement of world exploration and geographical knowledge when he penned the following in 1530: “Our age today is doing things which antiquity did not dream … Oceans have been crossed by the prowess of our navigators, and new islands found. The far recesses of India lie revealed. The continent of the West, the so-called “New World,” unknown to our forefathers, has in great part become known … Plato, Aristotle and the old philosophers made progress, and Ptolemy added a great deal more. Yet, were one of them to return today, he would find geography changed beyond recognition. A new globe has been given to us by the navigators and explorers of our time.”
Such was the sense of European wonder which formed the foundation for Guyot and other young continental scientists as they studied the natural sciences and the world at large. In 1848, Guyot, armed with university learning and a firm belief in a divine being, set forth from Switzerland to the United States, intent on teaching and scientifically exploring the unknown regions of the Appalachian Mountains. By 1854 he was teaching science and geography at Princeton University, and starting his explorations of the highlands of his new home. This would lead him ultimately to the Smokies, an area upon which he would leave his mark.
The Geographer’s Range
Guyot was not alone in his scientific interest in the geography of the Smokies. By the 1850s several other scientists and layman explorers were assisting in the measuring and mapping of the highest parts of the mountain range that writer and explorer Horace Kephart later called “the rooftop of eastern America.” This Smoky Mountain high country didn’t lend itself to casual travelers. Guyot said this of the places that he and Robert Collins trekked to: “Neither the white man or the Indian hunter venture in this wilderness.” Even in the early 20th century, when Horace Kephart explored the Smokies high country, he described it plainly: “The most rugged and difficult part of the Smokies (and of the United States east of Colorado) is in the sawtooth mountains between [Mt.] Collins and [Mt.] Guyot, at the headwaters of the Okona Lufty River. I know but few men who have ever followed this part of the divide.”
Arnold Guyot plied this “terra incognita” of the Smokies contemporaneously with men named Samuel Botsford Buckley, Thomas Lanier Clingman, John LeConte, and Dr. Samuel Leonidas Love, as well as others. Their geographer’s measurements of Smoky Mountain elevations in the mid-19th century fit into a complex series of geographic explorations which helped define the area and later informed the actions of citizens and government leaders about the significance of the Smokies. Interestingly, these explorers, including Guyot and Collins, would get prominent mountains named after them along the crest of the Smokies.
The Colorado Rockies have their “Collegiate” range, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire have their “Presidential” range; I like to call the section of the high Smokies from Mt. Guyot on the east to Mt. Collins, Clingmans Dome, Mt. Love and Mt. Buckley to the west as “The Geographer’s Range,” in honor of these very important early geographical pioneers.
In measuring the Smokies’ peaks in the middle of the 19th century, Guyot and his contemporaries generally used a process called “barometric leveling” to acquire elevations. According to writer John Noble Wilford, this process “was a widely used method in the 18th century, after Frenchman Blaise Pascal demonstrated that atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing elevation.” Barometers were invented in the 1600s, yet they were still state-of-the-art during Guyot’s time. But, as Wilford continues, “Given that barometric pressures do not remain precisely constant, the method was really never totally accurate on single objects. But it did prove useful on broad reconnaissance surveys, particularly in rugged terrain.” Such as in the Smokies.
Even though the altitude readings which these explorers got in their day were slightly off when compared with modern altimeters, Guyot and the other 19th century explorers nevertheless helped bring to life the terrain of the high country of the Smokies, and helped later engineers, surveyors, geologists, state and federal planners, citizens and local politicians determine where to build a trans-mountain road, recreational trails, parking lots and observation points for millions and millions of visitors to use at elevations ranging up to 6,643 feet at Clingmans Dome after Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established.
One geographic measurement made by Arnold Guyot proved to be very valuable in the future road development of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While in the Smokies, Guyot measured a gap that he initially referred to as “New Gap,” It was less steep than Indian Gap, which was about a mile and a half west. Indian Gap had been used for millennia by native peoples as a trading and communication route over the mountains, and primitive wagon roads built in the 19th century—Oconoluftee Turnpike and the Indian Gap Road—crossed over its crest. In the 1920s, prominent local business and civic leaders—folks who were strong proponents of automobile travel and regional tourism—pushed for a new national park in the Smokies. To that end, in the late 1920s and early ‘30s the states of Tennessee and North Carolina contracted for the construction of respective graded roads that would meet at Guyot’s New Gap, referred to then as “Newfound Gap”. This road bypassed the steeper Indian Gap and, when completed, became known thereafter as the “Newfound Gap Road.” When the National Park Service assumed administration of the newly established Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they got the assistance of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Public Roads to significantly improve the rough Newfound Gap Road. The bureau—with assistance from the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided very important labor—planned and constructed significant road re-routes, grading, paving, right-of-way improvements, and impressive landscaping and scenic overlooks. One such impressive overlook is the large parking lot at Newfound Gap itself, where there are public restrooms, a scenic path, Appalachian Trail markers, and a large stone monument to the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation, upon which President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Great Smoky Mountains National Park on September 2, 1940.
In the decades that followed, the Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration have maintained Newfound Gap road through the park as part of U.S. 441, a multi-state federal highway. Millions of tourists today traverse the high country of the Smokies via this scenic federal highway, a legacy of the historic work of the cooperating agencies and of Arnold Guyot.
In 1863 Arnold Guyot documented his significant work in the Smokies in an eighteen-page manuscript of observations and barometric measurements that he made from 1856-1860. He titled it “Notes on the Geography of the Mountain District of Western North Carolina” and dated it February 22 of that year. This important geographic manuscript vanished for many years, but writer Ken Wise, in his excellent book entitled Hiking Trails of the Great Smoky Mountains, details how it was fortunately located in 1929 by Myron Avery, then chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference and a future legendary Appalachian Trail “thru-hiker.” It is fortunate indeed for history that this manuscript was found.
In that 1863 manuscript, Guyot summarized their significance:
“To the Southwest of the gorges through which the Big Pigeon escapes from the mountains, the chain rises rapidly in high pointed peaks and sharp ridges … This is the beginning of the Smoky Mt. Chain proper, which by general elevation of both its peaks and its crest, by its perfect continuity, its great roughness and difficulty of approach, may be called the master chain of the Appalachian System.” High praise indeed.
The Recreational Benefits
Guyot’s identification of what he called “New Gap” was a fortunate finding not only for the road builders in the early 20th century who bypassed the steeper Indian Gap, but also for millions of recreationists and outdoor people. At Newfound Gap today, hikers, backpackers, sightseers, and naturalists can find a portal into the high country of the deep Smokies. Right at Newfound Gap, folks can access both the north and southbound sections of the Appalachian Trail, one of the nation’s premier long-distance trails which pushes almost 2,200 miles in its wilderness journey. Hikers in good physical shape and with hiking experience can do extensive backpacks on the AT from the Gap, including all the way to the trail’s north and south terminal points.
Additionally, just west of Newfound Gap is the road to Clingmans Dome, the highest peak in the Smokies, the highest mountain in Tennessee, and the highest peak along the entire Appalachian Trail. Hikers can drive from Newfound Gap to the Dome’s parking lot and ascend a half-mile, steep trail that leads to an observation tower. The tower affords incredible views of the southern Appalachian Mountains on clear days. One can actually pick out Mt. Mitchell in Yancey County, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, on a clear day. After enjoying the view, hikers can step onto the Appalachian Trail, near base of the tower, and hike seven miles back to Newfound Gap. Additionally, along the Clingmans Dome Road there are several trailhead connections, notably at Indian Gap, Fork Ridge trail, and Noland Divide trail.
There are also some interesting oddities of the past located right around the Newfound Gap area, for those who like abandoned things. Just about a half-mile off the southbound Appalachian Trail from Newfound Gap is a quirky old abandoned tunnel that goes under Clingmans Dome Road. I remember coming across this old tunnel one winter’s day back in the early 1980s while hiking toward Indian Gap on the AT. I caught a glimpse of the hand-hewn CCC stonework of the archway of the tunnel just a short distance off the trail. I hiked up to the tunnel and saw that it passed under Clingmans Dome Road and then dead-ended. At this terminal point, I looked down upon the modern Newfound Gap Road. I wondered, like others who have come to this place, whether this short trail and tunnel had connected with something in the past.
I researched this old “tunnel to nowhere,” and found that it once was part of a hiking trail that traversed westward on Thomas Ridge. In fact, noted Smoky Mountain writer and Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist Carson Brewer accurately described this abandoned tunnel in his 1962 booklet entitled Hiking in the Great Smokies. In a section titled “Newfound Gap to Indian Gap,” Brewer writes: “Park your car at Newfound Gap, and pick up the westward Appalachian Trail… Walk about one-half mile before turning left at the first [trail] intersection. This is the Thomas Ridge Trail. Follow it through the tunnel under the Dome Road and then westward.” Today, that “Thomas Ridge Trail” isn’t there anymore. It was obliterated when the Newfound Gap Road was re-routed in the 1960s to eliminate a very steep section of road below the Newfound Gap parking lot. So, the trail was obliterated but the tunnel is still there, serving as a reminder of a long-gone hiking trail. Some hikers today call the old tunnel the “Hiker’s Tunnel,” but I found that old-timers referred to it as the “Thomas Ridge Tunnel” or the “Mule Tunnel,” since draft animals were involved in its construction by the CCC in the mid-1930s.
Speaking of the re-route of the Newfound Gap Road, hikers can experience the steep drop of the abandoned section of the early road by walking past the barricades at the west end of the Newfound Gap parking lot and hike downhill. The old roadway is still passable, so hikers can go a short distance down this road or hike the approximate 2.5 miles to its junction with the Newfound Gap Road at the Beech Flats Prong “Quiet Walkway” gate. Pre-positioning a vehicle at the walkway gate is advisable, otherwise an uphill return hike is required.
From Newfound Gap, hikers can also hike west on the AT to Indian Gap, and then back for a pleasant three-mile day hike, providing another opportunity for outdoor recreation from the parking lot at Newfound Gap.
The Master Chain
Arnold Henry Guyot found his life’s work in the southern Appalachian Mountains. In addition to having the second highest peak in the Smokies named after him, he was also honored by having a peak in the White Mountains of New Hampshire bear his name, along with another one so designated in the majestic Colorado Rockies. And if that wasn’t enough, he was further distinguished by the international scientific community by having a geologic feature in the world’s oceans named in his honor.
Arnold Guyot’s seminal work in measuring a number of the gaps and peaks of the Smokies in the mid-19th century also served the recreational development of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in that some of the early planners of the Appalachian Trail used his data, and that of the other geographers, to help route the trail along the peaks of the high Smokies.
As writer Michael Frome stated in his book Strangers in High Places, Guyot “arrived in the Smokies at a time when they were essentially unknown, when maps that professed to show any details were vague and erroneous, when the mountain chains of southern Appalachia appeared to extend in all directions with equal prominence, defying reduction to orderly classification or schematic outline, and when Mount Washington in New Hampshire was accepted as the highest. It remained for Arnold Guyot to chart virtually the entire Appalachian chain, from north to south, to determine and describe its major geographic features and to make the first accurate scientific measurements of elevation.”
Another commentator, Gary Scott Smith, also assessed the important work of Arnold Guyot with these observations in American National Biography Online: “Guyot’s investigations, maps, tables, textbooks, and articles significantly influenced the development of both American and international geography during the second half of the 19th century. His research and publications provided important data about many geological formations and stimulated other geographers to do their own fieldwork. His extensive meteorological observations contributed to the establishment in 1870 of the U.S. Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service). A generous, energetic, devoutly religious man who enjoyed many close friendships, Guyot hiked and climbed mountains to obtain scientific information well beyond his 70th birthday.”
Arnold Guyot, the bespectacled Swiss college professor turned American geologist/geographer, didn’t know it at the time, but he voiced in the 19th century the most compelling assessment of why the Smokies were later selected as a national park in the 20th century, when he wrote in his 1863 manuscript that the Smokies were the “Master Chain” of the Appalachian Mountains. His enduring and energetic scientific work and legacy in the Smokies is why there is a 6,621-foot-high mountain named after him in the park. It’s somewhat unfortunate to the modern Smokies’ visitor that Mt. Guyot is not easily accessible and is shrouded in a dense spruce-fir forest, with no direct trail to its summit. But that inaccessibility is really in keeping with the historical conditions that Arnold Guyot experienced in his own explorations over 150 ago.
Today, all of us who drive, hike, backpack, or otherwise access the central interior of Great Smoky Mountains National Park for recreation, nature study, and scenic vistas owe an unfathomable debt to Arnold Henry Guyot, the “furriner” who slogged up the high ridges with his mountain man guide Robert Collins to become the premier geographer of the Great Smoky Mountains. He richly deserves to have that mountain named after him in “The Geographer’s Range” of the Smokies.