G-257 Parking Space at Clingman's Dome, Great Smoky Mountains National Park ~ Linen type postcard, Ashville Post Card Co., Ashville, N.C., production number 88741. This card is unused and undated. My guess is about 1939. Overall: VERY FINE.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a United States National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. In the 1920s and early-1930s, the U.S. National Park Service desired a park in the eastern United States, but did not have much money to establish one. Though Congress had authorized the park in 1926, there was no nucleus of federally-owned land around which to build a park. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. contributed $5 million, the U.S. government added $2 million, and private citizens from Tennessee and North Carolina pitched in to assemble the land for the park, piece by piece. Slowly, mountain homesteaders, miners, and loggers were evicted from the land. Farms and timbering operations were abolished in establishing the protected area of the park. Travel writer Horace Kephart, for whom Mount Kephart was named, and photographer George Masa were instrumental in fostering the development of the park. The park was officially established on June 15, 1934. During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and other federal organizations made trails, fire watchtowers, and other infrastructure improvements to the park and Smoky Mountains.

Click on my graphic to enlarge it greatly but, if you do, remember that magnified defects appear to be much worse than they actually are and my scanner glass may not have been entirely clean. All of the postcards I sell on eBay are genuine vintage originals unless specified otherwise. I try to describe their condition to the best of my ability but please study my scan before bidding. Cards often have a previous dealer's price written on the back in pencil. I do not consider this a defect. All of my cards are duplicates or unwanted material from my own collection. I have collected cards for over 40 years and have a heck of a lot of unwanted and duplicate material. Check my eBay store in the postal history category for postcards that are more valuable as philatelic objects.