Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Horace Kephart: The Naturalist Who Fought To Save The Smokies

Naturalist Horace Kephart is a Southern Appalachian icon. He authored beloved books about hiking and exploring, and one of his most famous is even lovingly referred to as the “camper’s Bible.” But Kephart is perhaps best known for his crusade to preserve the Great Smoky Mountains.

He spent years advocating to establish the Great Smoky Mountains National Park because of his own experience in the region. He wrote: “I owe my life to these mountains, and I want them preserved so that others may profit from them.”

A new biography compiles decades of research into the many facets of Horace Kephart, from his own mountainous exploration to his career as a librarian, and even his public fall from grace.

Host Frank Stasio talks to authors George Ellison and Janet McCue about “Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography” (Great Smoky Mountains Association/2019). Ellison is a naturalist and writer who lives in Bryson City, North Carolina, and McCue is a writer, researcher and the former director of the Mann Library at Cornell University.

Ellison will be at Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville on Saturday, May 11 at 3 p.m.

Amanda Magnus is the executive producer of Embodied, a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships and health. She has also worked on other WUNC shows including Tested and CREEP.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
More Stories