Kephart, Horace, 1862-1931

<p>Horace Sowers Kephart (September 8, 1862 – April 2, 1931) was an American travel writer and librarian, best known as the author of Our Southern Highlanders (a memoir about his life in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina) and the classic outdoors guide Camping and Woodcraft.</p>

<p>Kephart was born in East Salem, Pennsylvania, and raised in Iowa. He was the director of the St. Louis Mercantile Library in St. Louis, Missouri from 1890 to 1903; during these years Kephart also wrote about camping and hunting trips.[4] Earlier, Kephart had also worked as a librarian at Yale University and spent significant time in Italy as an employee of a wealthy American book collector.</p>

<p>In 1904, Kephart's family (wife Laura and their six children) moved to Ithaca, New York, without him, but Laura and Horace never divorced or legally separated. Horace Kephart found his way to western North Carolina, where he lived in the Hazel Creek section of what would later become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.</p>

<p>Later in life Kephart campaigned for the establishment of a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains with photographer and friend George Masa, and lived long enough to know that the park would be created. He was later named one of the fathers of the national park. He also helped plot the route of the Appalachian Trail through the Smokies. Kephart died in a car accident in 1931, and was buried near Bryson City, North Carolina, a small town near the area he wrote about in Our Southern Highlanders. Two months before his death, Mount Kephart was named in his honor.</p>

He wrote of his experiences in a series of articles in the magazine Field and Stream. These articles were collected into his first book, Camping and Woodcraft, which was first published in 1906. He also published some more books of the same theme such as Camp Cookery (1910) and Sporting Firearms (1912). In addition, he wrote The Hunting Rifle section of Guns, Ammunition and Tackle (New York: Macmillan, 1904), a volume of Caspar Whitney's prestigious American Sportsman's Library.

Combining his own experience and observations with other written studies, Kephart wrote a study of Appalachian lifestyles and culture called Our Southern Highlanders, published in 1913 and expanded in 1922.

Kephart completed a typescript for a novel in 1929. However, the book was not edited and published until 2009, when it was published under the title Smoky Mountain Magic by Great Smoky Mountains Association.

Kephart never left the Great Smokies. He was killed in a mountain-road automobile accident on April 2, 1931.

<p>BIRTH</p>
<p>8 Sep 1862, East Salem, Juniata County, Pennsylvania, USA</p>
<p>DEATH</p>
<p>2 Apr 1931 (aged 68), Swain County, North Carolina, USA</p>
<p>CENOTAPH</p>
<p>Ithaca City Cemetery, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York, USA</p>

<p>Scholar, author and outdoorsman. Early champion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Leaving his family and his job as chief librarian of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, Kephart journeyed to the southern Appalachians in 1904, eventually settling near Bryson City in Swain County, North Carolina. He spent most of the remainder of his life traveling the southern mountains, researching the area and its inhabitants. In 1913 he authored "Our Southern Highlanders," which became the definitive work on the area. He also published "Book of Camping and Woodcraft: A Guidebook for Those Who Travel in the Wilderness," which was the "bible" of outdoor living in its day. During the 1920's he contributed his significant influence to promoting the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. His death occurred as result of an automobile accident, and he did not live to see the National Park come to fruition in 1940.</p>