Tuesday, September 3, 2013

George Masa

The Great Smoky Mountains[edit source | editbeta]

Masa came to love the mountains of Western North Carolina and worked tirelessly for their preservation - at his own expense. Using his photographic equipment and an odometer he crafted from an old bicycle,[3] Masa meticulously catalogued a significant number of peaks,[4] the distances between them, and the names given to them by the local settlers and the Cherokee.[2] He was a friend ofHorace Kephart [5] and the two of them worked together to ensure that a large portion of the Great Smoky Mountains would be established as a national park. Masa also scouted and marked the entire North Carolina portion of the Appalachian Trail.[6]