Laura Thornburgh, who wrote under the name Laura Thornborough, is best known for The Great Smoky Mountains, which was first published by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1937. A 1904 UT graduate, she participated in a wide range of activities on campus. She was a member of Chi Omega sorority and Phi Kappa Phi; served as class historian; belonged to the Barbara Blount Literary Society, the Rouge and Powder Dramatic Club, and the Young Women’s Athletics Association; served as team manager for girls’ basketball and as class editor for both the Magazine and the Volunteer. Her senior thesis was on poet Robert Burns.
A voracious reader and prolific writer, she wrote book reviews for the Knoxville News Sentinel before she graduated and was also hired to cover the Summer School of the South in 1902 for the News Sentinel.
Having developed an interest in film, she moved to New York to study at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University. After completing her studies at Columbia, she worked in Washington, DC, as an editorial film editor for National Nontheatrical Motion Pictures Inc. and as a scenario editor for the US Department of Agriculture’s Educational Film Service. Her first book, Motion Pictures in Education (1923) was cowritten with the director of the USDA film unit, Don Carlos Ellis.
Thornburgh was an early member of the Smoky Mountain Hiking Club and a person deeply committed to the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She spent as much time as she could in the early 1920s in the mountains, but she was also involved in a variety of other projects. In 1924 she served as chair of the National Motion Picture Committee of the League of American Pen Women. In 1924 also, she published her second book, The Etiquette of Letter Writing, and followed it with a third, Interior Decorating for Everybody (1925). Written with Edwina Abbot Cowan, The Psychologist Keeps House appeared in 1930.
In 1933 she produced her most publicized film, the government-sponsored Historic Scenes along the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, to celebrate completion of the highway that led from Washington, DC, to Mount Vernon.
With photographs of her own and some from the more famous local photographer Jim Thompson, she published The Great Smoky Mountains in 1937. It was a success both from book reviews throughout the country and from sales. She began a new career as a lecturer and an authority on the Great Smoky Mountains. The book was issued in nine editions, most by the UT Press. She additionally wrote numerous feature articles, book reviews, and drama critiques, including columns for the Knoxville Journal dealing with the Smoky Mountains.
In 1956 and again in 1960, she donated materials on the Great Smoky Mountains to the UT library. The source materials for her book on the Great Smoky Mountains, unpublished manuscripts, and notes on the published work were among items she donated.