“On the same afternoon [in 1908 that President Theodore Roosevelt] declared the Grand Canyon a national monument, he began threatening to do the same with large parts of the Appalachian and White Mountains, an action certain to cause tremendous resistance by congressmen from Maine to Georgia. One notable exception was Gov. Robert Glenn of North Carolina, who committed himself politically to Roosevelt’s conservationist crusade, hoping that the Great Smoky Mountains would emerge as a national monument.”
— from “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America” by Douglas Brinkley.
A few months later Glenn would tell the National Governors Conference, “Our forests are being denuded…. Our people… have been living only for the present, thinking of themselves and not of their children and their children’s children.”
Brinkley also recounts the aftermath of a 1902 accident that killed Roosevelt’s Secret Service agent (who had thrown himself in front of a runaway trolley to protect the president) and left TR with a permanently damaged leg:
“Refusing to let the crash at Pittsfield [Mass.] preclude his visit to the Biltmore estate to study its forestry program firsthand, Roosevelt arrived as scheduled on Sept. 9 [less than a week afterward]…
“Local dignitaries… poured onto Roosevelt’s railway car, eager to shake hands with the president, who with artificial geniality kept saying ‘Dee-lighted.’ His face was still battered and bruised from the accident, so polite people tried not to stare…
“After delivering a patriotic speech, Roosevelt headed in his carriage to the Biltmore estate, in a bone-chilling wind…Under the guidance of Carl A. Schenck, Biltmore’s forestry school was setting a standard for scientific professionalism… Yet Roosevelt was piqued because Schenck wasn’t an American citizen (he kept his German citizenship), so their conversation didn’t go well…”