Harvey Broome

Harvey Benjamin Broome was one of the eight founders of The Wilderness Society in 1935. Born in 1902, he grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. He spent much of his time at his grandfather's farm in nearby Fountain City, and that is where he apparently developed his deep love of the natural world. The farm was 40 miles north of the Smoky Mountains, and when Broome was 15 his father took him on his first camping trip, to Silers Bald in the Smokies.

After graduating from Knoxville High School in 1919, Broome attended the University of Tennessee, graduating in 1923. Three years later he earned a law degree from Harvard University. He began his career as a law clerk and eventually became a lawyer with an Oak Ridge firm, Kramer, Dye, McNabb and Greenwood. The demands of his profession limited the time he could spend outdoors, so Broome left the firm to become a clerk again.

On October 19, 1934, while attending a forestry conference in the Smokies, Broome was one of several men who pulled off the road during a field trip. They wanted to discuss the need for an organization that would protect America’s wilderness. Three months later The Wilderness Society was born, thanks to Broome, Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, and five other conservationists.

He was a Wilderness Society leader for the rest of his years and was its president from 1957 to 1968. Broome worked closely with Executive Director Howard Zahniser to persuade Congress to create the National Wilderness Preservation System. That finally happened in 1964 when Congress passed the Wilderness Act. Broome stood proudly with other conservationists to watch President Lyndon Johnson sign this important bill into law.

A skilled writer, Broome contributed articles to Living Wilderness, National Parks Magazine, and Nature, among others. His writing appeared in three books published after his death: Out Under the Skies in the Great Smoky Mountains; Faces of the Wilderness; and Harvey Broome: Earth Man. Benton MacKaye, another Wilderness Society founder and the father of the Appalachian Trail, called Broome's journals "a marked contribution to nature findings — of fact underfoot and of thought overhead."

Broome also served as the long-time president of the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club. Over the years he hiked most of the mountains and hollows and fought hard to prevent inappropriate development in the Smokies. In October 1966 he organized the "Save Our Smokies" hike, attracting more than 1,300 people. This event has been credited with preventing construction of a road across the Smokies from Bryson City, North Carolina, to Townsend, Tennessee.

Many of his hiking trips were in the company of his wife Anna. She shared his passion for the outdoors, and they were married in 1937. They lived in a house that the couple had moved from Broome's grandfather's farm, and they had a cabin in the Smokies.

Broome was appointed to the Advisory Council of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, was elected president of the East Tennessee Historical Society, and served as director of the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association. He was also a trustee of the Robert Marshall Wilderness Fund, created to protect wild lands.

This great conservationist died of a heart attack on March 8, 1968, while building a wren's house out of a hollow log.