David Arthur Ramsey is an outdoor photographer, writer and conservationist, born and raised in Unicoi County, Tennessee. His work has been published locally, regionally and nationally and is often associated with preserving threatened lands and waters of the southern Appalachians. Field and Stream Magazine and the Toyota Motor Company named him the National Hero of Conservation in 2011 for his leadership in saving the 10,000-acre Rocky Fork watershed in northeastern Tennessee.
David Arthur Ramsey
In the mountains of northeastern Tennessee, where I was born and raised and now live again, lies a high, 10,000-acre wild area known simply as Rocky Fork. Five generations of my family lived at the foot of the area and, along with other local families, spent much of their lives there hunting, fishing, camping and enjoying it.
I wasn’t born near Rocky Fork as were my father, his father before him and his before him, but I grew up only a dozen or so miles away, in the same county, and went there often to visit my Ramsey relations. It was during that early, formative period in my life that a deep connection was created between Rocky Fork and my young psyche; a connection formed largely from my visits there and countless family stories about its mythical woods, waters and wild places.
I grew up, moved away for several years, and then finally returned to my native Unicoi County for good in the 1990s. It was then that I learned that Rocky Fork was being considered as a possible location for a massive, gated mountain development. This was terrible news to me, not only because of my long family connection to the land, but because I had learned over the years that to conservationists, Rocky Fork was considered a rare place of the highest ecological, historical and recreational importance within the greater Blue Ridge.
For nearly the next decade, under the local leadership of noted Tennessee lawyer and conservationist, Ed E. Williams III, an all-out effort was made to get Rocky Fork transferred to public ownership. Unfortunately, a deal was never finalized, and in 2004 Ed, Rocky Fork’s great champion, lost his battle with cancer.
However, to his eternal credit, Ed Williams had done an incredible job of laying the foundation for Rocky Fork’s preservation by uniting all the sportsmen, hikers, trout fishers, horsemen and conservationists he could muster to let state and federal officials know how important the area had long been to them all. So when the word spread in 2005 that Rocky Fork’s owner was shopping for buyers again, it was a matter of rallying the forces and making it known to anyone and everyone we could that this was our final chance to save what Ed Williams liked to call the “last crown jewel of the Blue Ridge.”
Thanks to the amazing leadership of The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander and a host of other key individuals and groups (which I refer to as “The Champions of Rocky Fork”), taking that final chance paid off. After three years of hard, never-say-die work and securing the funding for its $40 million price tag, the dream of preserving and permanently protecting the Rocky Fork Watershed was realized on December 15, 2008.
Now, 2,000 acres of Rocky Fork make up Tennessee’s new Rocky Fork State Park, with the remaining 8,000 acres being added to the Cherokee National Forest. Hence, the story of Rocky Fork is a powerful example of what can happen when people find common ground, regardless of their ideology or political leanings, and work together to make something big and good and important happen for themselves, their communities and for future generations of Americans.
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The story above appears in our March/April 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription.