Too popular? National park struggles with sometimes contradictory objectives

Perhaps more than any other national park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park wrestles with goals that can clearly be contradictory: protecting and preserving the park’s natural environs and providing for public enjoyment of the park.

In 1916, the Organic Act created the National Park Service in part to “conserve the [parks’] scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and… leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” With annual visitation...