Great Smoky Mountains- Mountain Building/Sedimentary
For my National Park I have chosen America’s oldest and most visited park, the Great Smoky Mountains, over a billion years in the making. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said " There are trees here that stood before our forefathers ever came to this continent; there are brooks that still run as clear as on the day the first pioneer cupped his hand and drank from them". What president Roosevelt means by this is that the Smoky Mountains are continuously being shaped and rejuvenated by its natural elements of wind, water and erosion calling these mountains "true living mountains". In chapter three we learned about the geological process of mountain building. This is how the mountain range…show more content… The huge amounts of heat and pressure transforms the Smoky Mountains dominate sedimentary bed rock into metamorphosed folded structures. In chapter seven we learned about the different creations of rocks and minerals formed from processes like weathering. This is how the three dominate rock types came to be. Sandstone became quartzite, shale became slate and the limestone rock where the metamorphic rock slid over the limestone creating three main faults throughout the mountains, Greenbrurg Faults, Great smoky Faults, and the Gatlinburg Faults. As we learned the rock cycle describes changes that rocks go through over time creating different forms. When layers of sediment rock get buried beneath other layers of sedimentary rock, heat from pressure starts to bake the rock into crystals and these changes are called Metamorphosis. We learned about metamorphic conditions in chapter eight explaining the type of transformation due to weathering and erosion of sedimentary rocks. When earth’s tectonic plates move around Metamorphosis occurs.…show more content… Orogeny is a mountain building process that includes subduction- related chains and mountain- building associated with continental collisions. This process is how we define the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains. The Smoky Mountains are home to hundreds of different wildlife and species. In the 1900’s the park was in danger of destruction from the mass of large scale logging jeopardizing the life of the forest. Horace Kemphart was an American librarian and an abundant seeker of life and nature. His life’s greatest work came from his devotion to saving and creating the national park we know today. Kempharts quote says it all, “The dreamy blue haze that ever hovers over the mountains softens all outlines, lends a mirage- like effect of great distance to objects that are but a few miles off, while those farther removed grow more and more intangible that finally the skyline blends in with the sky”. Thanks to pioneers like Kephart and President Roosevelt, the Great Smoky Mountains were declared an International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations and a National Park saving the last of the old growth forest. Today the Great Smoky Mountains is at an amazing 95% lush, forest
