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Layer: BACKCOUNTRY_CAMPSITES (ID:0)

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Name: BACKCOUNTRY_CAMPSITES

Display Field: LOC_NAME

Type: Feature Layer

Geometry Type: esriGeometryPoint

Description: 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.One such is the so-called kitchen shelter developed in the Northwest, where presumably heavy rainfall is an abnormal threat to cooking picnic fare in the open. The type evolved is a kind of combined kitchen and picnic shelter, the sides widely open except against the prevailing winds. Our countrymen of this region must fairly radiate sweetness and light, for here almost invariably the facilities for cooking are double, triple or quadruple ovens ranged in close proximity about one chimney. The shelters bear no noticeable scars of intergroup ruction and seem almost to refute the widely held conviction that close contact of picnicking groups is provocative of trouble. Perhaps from this peaceable region will spread forth the millennium when the lion and the lamb universally can picnic on the same half-acre and like it.Typical of the Southwest is the ramada, functioning in protection of the picnicker from the heat and brilliance of the desert sun. Its name is from the Spanish, its style generally derived from the Pueblo. It is built with rock or adobe walls or piers, its practically flat roof carried on round poles, or vigas. The roofs are usually covered with a kind of thatch allowed to hang down over the edges as a fringed protective valance of bewhiskered appearance. The ramada of the desert country is often equipped with an integral open fireplace and chimney. Sometimes there is provided instead an outdoor fireplace nearby for the preparation of food. The ramada often accommodates more than one picnic group.There are logical combinations of the shelter with other park structural needs which bring welcome diversification to its form and appearance. Custodian's or concessionaire's quarters, concession space, public comfort stations, storage space, and other facilities have been successfully incorporated with shelters and produced satisfying variations which avoid implication either of the commonplace on the one hand or the fantastic on the other. There are sufficient legitimate combinations and cross combinations of functions, materials, forms, and other ingredients to make possible an almost infinite number of agreeably different shelters, if served up without economy of skill and effort in the contriving, and seasoned with a palatable dash of individuality.The shelter floor may be simply a gravel or earth fill, or may be brick or stone laid on a sand fill. A wood floor for a shelter has little to recommend it. Concrete pavement with one of several surface materials may be used. The variety of soil and frost conditions over the entire country precludes the making of a recommendation in the choice of material. Available funds likewise will affect its selection. Whatever material a thorough consideration of circumstances may designate for use, it is rather to be urged that it be intelligently employed with due thought for its fitness and durability. So many pavements of open shelters have failed to survive the local temperature range and frost action with such disheartening results, that it is not unfair to assert that there has been too prevalent ignorance or naive disregard of unchangeable material facts. Were it not for the introductory promise to avoid the "primer" approach within these discussions, there would be at this point a yielding to temptation to point out that masonry expands under heat and contracts with cold, and that proper expansion joints are a specific, that foundation walls are unreliable unless carried below the local frost level, and that bounding retaining walls do not long retain if moisture can collect underground above the frost line. A promise being what it is, a recall of these elementary facts must go herein unrecorded and neglected.

Copyright Text: Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Min. Scale: 0

Max. Scale: 0

Default Visibility: true

Max Record Count: 2000

Supported query Formats: JSON, geoJSON, PBF

Use Standardized Queries: True

Extent:

Drawing Info:

HasZ: false

HasM: false

Has Attachments: false

Has Geometry Properties: false

HTML Popup Type: esriServerHTMLPopupTypeAsHTMLText

Object ID Field: OBJECTID

Unique ID Field:

Global ID Field: GlobalID

Type ID Field: CAMP_RESTRICTION

Fields:
Types:

Is Data Versioned: false

Has Contingent Values: false

Supports Rollback On Failure Parameter: true

Last Edit Date: 3/14/2025 4:17:43 PM

Schema Last Edit Date: 3/14/2025 4:17:43 PM

Data Last Edit Date: 3/14/2025 4:17:43 PM

Supported Operations:   Query   Query Pivot   Query Top Features   Query Analytic   Query Bins   Generate Renderer   Validate SQL   Get Estimates   ConvertFormat