Question: What happened to the farms and timbering operations?
About the article "Great Smoky Mountains National Park", section "History".

Candidate passages:
The area is supported by rice farming, fisheries and timbering. 
The area is supported by rice farming, fisheries and timbering. 
Many of the farms in the area are no longer used for agriculture and some have been sold off for housing development.
The fields being taken over by farms at a greater distance, this has happened due to technological advances which make small farms un-economical to run.
Several farms up until the 1970s had herds of dairy cattle but low milk prices forced many farms to turn to arable farming. 
How can understanding of species' natural history aid their effective conservation in human-dominated ecosystems?
Humans often conduct activities that allow for the incorporation of other species, whether as a byproduct or as a result of a focus on nature.
Traditional natural history can only inform how best to do this to a certain degree, because landscapes have been changed so dramatically.
However, there is much more to learn through direct study of species' ecology in human-dominated ecosystems, through what is known as focused natural history.
Rosenzweig cites four examples: shrikes (Laniidae) thrived in altered landscapes when wooden fence post perches allowed them easy access to pouncing on prey, but inhospitable steel fence posts contributed to their decline.
Replacing steel fenceposts with wood fenceposts reverses the shrikes' decline and allows humans to determine the reasons for the distribution and abundance of shrikes.
Additionally, cirl bunting (Emberiza cirlus) thrived on farms when fields alternated between harvests and hay, but declined where farmers began to plant winter grain crops, natterjack toads (Bufo calamatus) declined when reductions in sheep grazing ceased to alter ponds to their preferred shape and depth, and longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) declined in the southeastern United States when lack of wildfires prevented its return after timbering.
Thus, applying focused natural history in human-dominated landscapes can contribute to conservation efforts. 
A long-term (12-year) study continuing the work of Sattler and Reichenbach (1998) was conducted to assess population trends on a larger time scale.
The same treatment sites and study methods were used.
Two years after timbering, the numbers of surface-active animals on the clearcut sites had dropped to 25% of levels before timbering.
The population did not begin to recover until five years after timbering, and finally stabilized at only 55% of before-timbering levels.
Timbering on the shelterwood sites was ultimately not shown to have a significant long-term impact on "P. hubrichti" populations.
As discussed for short-term timbering effects, population declines in clearcut sites may be attributed to mortality, emigration, or some combination of the two.
Immediately after timbering, 41% of the salamanders relocated from transects established at the edge of clearcuts to reference transects that were 3–9 m distant.
This was surprising, since "Plethodon" salamanders are highly philopatric, not typically emigrating long distances under normal circumstances, and "P. hubrichti" typically has a home range of <1 m2, It is not known if the salamanders would be capable of moving much longer distances to more suitable habitat after clearcuts, nor if they would be capable of surviving in these new locales.
Long-term studies are beneficial for separating the effects of normal population fluctuations from the effects of timbering.
Reference site levels of "P. hubrichti" varied from 0.19 to 0.35 surface-active salamanders/m2 during the course of the study, with a complete oscillation over an 11-year period around a mean of 0.28/m2.
Had the study been shorter, the population would have appeared to decline overall instead of varying.
With this variation at reference sites as a comparison, clearcuts evidently have a significant negative impact on Peaks of Otter salamander populations, with no signs of complete recovery even 12 years after timbering.
While shelterwood cuts do not leave the population completely unscathed, they are not harmful in the long term, and if applied judiciously they may be used in allopatric areas where populations of "P. hubrichti" are otherwise stable.
The most significant timbering question concerns the sympatric zone with "P. hubrichti" and "P. cinereus".
Kniowski and Reichenbach hypothesize that timbering, especially clearcuts, would cause an increase in temperature and decrease in moisture on the forest floor, and this, in turn, might favor the more widespread "P. cinereus", as this species may be more resistant to increased temperatures and evaporation rates.