Great Smoky Mountains National Park Back Country Shelters

This is a vector point file showing the backcountry shelters at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The majority of these data were collected using Trimble ProXR GPS unit.

BEYOND DOUBT the most generally useful building in any park is a shelter, usually open but sometimes enclosed or enclosable, and then referred to as a recreation or community building, or a pavilion.

It is admittedly no trivial task to achieve a desirable and unforced variety in such buildings within the confines of a moderate cost. This is true of other park structures, but it is more apparent of shelters because they are so universally existent in park areas. It is the almost invariable presence of at least one shelter, and often of several shelters, in every park that tends to make us especially and painfully aware of a spiritless monotony of design and execution. Exertion of effort to bring character to a shelter, such as will differentiate it from a thousand and one others, is all too rare; attainment of the objective, without bizarre result, still more rare. The attempt is worth all the creative effort expended; the successful accomplishment, truly worthy of praise.

Because its purpose and use usually lead to its placement in the choicest of locations within the park, where it is natural to invite the park user to rest and contemplate a particularly beautiful prospect or setting, the shelter finds itself in the very center of a stage with a back-drop by the first Old Master. Its role is thus a difficult one, and is ill-played if rendered in the flippant slang or thin syncopated measures of the moment. Slapstick comedy technique is inappropriate; some dignity beyond passing fad or fashion is demanded of the shelter's stellar part.

The essentials of a shelter include first of all overhead protection and a place to sit and rest. In size, shelters range from the very small and minor, in a simple rendering, to the large and complicated, when many extra-functional dependencies are included in the ambitious structures of a large, much-used park.

Transition from the simplest to the specialized or more complex structure may be effected by the incorporation of one or more fireplaces, the partial or complete enclosing of the sides for protection from wind or weather, the provision of ovens or grills for picnic cooking and tables and seats for the picnic meal. The shelter of special purpose or the recreation building for year-round use results.

There are colloquial departures in shelters and their functions that make for some well-defined varieties.