Park enthusiast is speaker for Moccasin Bend event

Tennessee was not "a trackless wilderness" when Europeans first visited here in the 1500s, according to Charles W. Maynard, founding executive director in 1994 of Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

"We often talk about Spanish explorers and their discoveries when, in fact, there were lots of people living in what is now Tennessee in the 1500s," said Mr. Maynard, the next speaker in the Moccasin Bend Lecture Series. "This was not a trackless wilderness. It was well crisscrossed with trade routes."

An author, storyteller and minister, Mr. Maynard recently researched the journals of Spanish explorers Hernando de Soto, Tristan Luna and Juan Pardo. He is the author of 28 books, 21 of which are nonfiction books for children.

In today's Moccasin Bend lecture, the second in the series, Mr. Maynard will share what he learned about the Spanish explorations into Tennessee. It actually is a narrative more about the people the explorers met than the explorers themselves, he said.

A Chattanooga native transplanted to Jonesboro, Tenn., Mr. Maynard is a longtime parks advocate who developed the Friends of the Smokies into an organization with an annual budget of more than $1.8 million. It was through an effort to learn about the first European visits to the Smokies that he became interested in researching Spanish explorer journals.

In one of Pardo's journal entries, Mr. Maynard said, he found the first written mention of "Tenasqui," which became Tennessee.

Shelley Andrews, executive director of the Friends of Moccasin Bend Park, said she has high hopes for Mr. Maynard's talk.

"He's a very interesting man," she said.

Mr. Maynard's parents, John and Lou Maynard, still live on Signal Mountain.

The next lecture will be Monday, Nov. 9 by Dirk Kempthorne, a former governor of Idaho and secretary of the interior from May 2006 until January 2009.