“Land of Everlasting Hills: George Masa, Jim Thompson, and the Photographs That Helped Save the Great Smoky Mountains and Blaze the Appalachian Trail” By Ren and Helen Davis (University of Georgia Press, 296 pages, $39.95)
In their introduction to “Land of Everlasting Hills,” a collection of early 20th-century photographs by George Masa and Jim Thompson documenting the Great Smoky Mountains, authors Ren and Helen Davis quote a 1926 essay by Horace Kephart, a writer and outdoorsman who became a passionate advocate for preserving the region’s beauty through the creation of a national park: “Here to-day is the last stand of American primeval forest at its best. If saved … it will be a joy and a wonder to our people for all time.”
Masa and Thompson, gifted artists with distinctly different sensibilities, captured the unique beauty of the Smokies, then a relatively unknown area outside the Southeast. Along with the advocacy of figures like Kephart, their photographs played a significant role in making the national park a reality in 1934. In addition to the more than 200 photographs in “Land of Everlasting Hills,” the Davises provide a history of the park’s creation, as well as biographies of both photographers. They answered questions from Chapter 16 by email.
Q: You acknowledge in “Land of Everlasting Hills” that you went into the project not knowing much about George Masa or Jim Thompson. What surprised or intrigued you as you learned about their lives and work?
A: At the outset, we knew only that George Masa was a Japanese photographer who photographed in the Great Smokies in the early years of the 20th century. Shortly after we began the project, we contacted (UGA Press editor) Nathan Holly to share that George Masa was only half the story. While he was working on the North Carolina side of the mountains, a commercial photographer in Knoxville named Jim Thompson was producing images of the Tennessee side.