Lost Elkmont

By Daniel L. Paulin

The story of Elkmont from small logging community to exclusive summer resort and GSMNP site.

Prior to the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) in 1934, the small community of Elkmont was established as a logging camp by Col. Wilson B. Townsend's Little River Lumber Company around 1908. This was after he purchased 86,000 acres of mostly virgin forest. The area that was previously inhabited by various American Indian groups, and later by European-American settlers beginning around 1830, was to become for a time the second largest town in Sevier County, Tennessee. Colonel Townsend's business ventures proved successful beyond expectation, as he skillfully exploited the area's valuable hardwood forests. His logging company and railroad provided a mountain population with jobs and steady wages. Once all the valuable timber was harvested, Townsend sold land to private citizens who established what was to become an exclusive summer community that included both the Appalachian and Wonderland Clubs. These coexisted inside the GSMNP until 1992. This is the story of Elkmont.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Mar 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439650127

Daniel L. Paulin

Daniel Paulin draws upon extensive research from the archives of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the University of Tennessee Library's Special Collections Unit, the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, private collections, and interviews with numerous area residents with ties to Elkmont.

Book preview

mention.

INTRODUCTION

The mountains are calling and I must go.

—John Muir

Why the title Lost Elkmont? Elkmont certainly can be found on all of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park maps. Elkmont itself is not lost, but much of its history is little known by anyone other than knowledgeable locals, park historical/cultural interpreters, curious history buffs, inquisitive visitors, and the descendants of the people who once lived there or toiled for the Little River Lumber Company or the Little River Railroad Company or inhabited the summer communities that developed there in the early 1900s.

Elkmont is located in the north-central part of the Tennessee section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This park also overlaps portions of North Carolina and is the most visited national park in the United States. The park receives between nine and 10 million visitors yearly and is within a one-day drive for 60 to 70 percent of the nation’s population. However, only a fraction of those visitors are likely aware of the history and/or significance of Elkmont or realize that there is so much more to it than its present designation as one of the park’s nine developed campgrounds and a jumping-off point for hiking.

As of the writing of this book in the spring and summer of 2014, many of the physical remnants of Elkmont’s history not already removed by Great Smoky Mountains National Park are fast being erased by the passage of years, theft by souvenir hunters, and destruction by vandals. Despite the park staff’s best efforts to protect, preserve, and rehabilitate the Elkmont Historic District, this battle against time awaits victory.

Elkmont was formerly a logging town, established around 1908 by Col. Wilson B. Townsend. A Pennsylvania businessman and entrepreneur, Townsend initially traveled to the southern Appalachians in 1898 in search of hardwood forests from which he could harvest timber to meet the need for construction materials in the northeastern United States, where rich forests had been depleted. Townsend indeed found what he had been looking for and, in short order, introduced modern-day commercial logging to an area that later became a part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Townsend purchased approximately 86,000 acres in 1901 and quickly established the Little River Lumber Company and, shortly thereafter, the Little River Railroad Company. The railroad was the key to providing an efficient method of transporting the timber harvested in the mountains back to the large sawmill he built around 1903 in the community formerly referred to, at different times, as either Tuckaleechee Cove or Tang.

Shortly after Colonel Townsend’s arrival in the area, the community was renamed Townsend in his honor. His logging and railroad operations provided hundreds of jobs to a mountain populace that was previously barely eking out a living, mostly as subsistence farmers, hunters, and gatherers. They seldom had, nor rarely saw, money prior to their employment with Townsend’s lumber company or railroad.

The present-day Little River Road, also identified as Tennessee Highway 73 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, connecting Elkmont to Townsend, actually sits atop the original railroad bed constructed by the Little River Railroad Company. Furthermore, the Elkmont Campground is located at the site of the former logging town.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established on June 15, 1934, and was officially dedicated by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1940, at Newfound Gap, located on the Tennessee–North Carolina border.

One of this park’s distinctions is that it was formed entirely by the purchase of privately owned land located in the states of Tennessee and North Carolina. Almost all of the other national parks were established on public lands owned by the US government.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, located within the Appalachian mountain chain in the southeastern United States, contains roughly 521,000 acres of thickly forested mountains, peaceful valleys—coves, as the local mountain residents call them—boulder-strewn rivers, bucolic and swiftly moving streams, waterfalls, awe-inspiring mountain vistas, and over 800 miles of trails in a federally protected wilderness sanctuary.

The park is known worldwide for its diversity of flora and fauna. Since 1973, the park has been designated an International Biosphere Reserve, and it was certified by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site Reserve in 1983.

Elkmont is a miniscule portion of the total landmass that makes up Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is but one of many oases in the midst of spectacular beauty and wilderness. More important, it can serve as a map for those wishing to chart the progression of this area from early pioneer expansion to the exploitation of natural resources via commercial logging to the beginnings of an ecotourism economy that introduced wilderness lodging and unlimited recreational opportunities.

The term Elkmont dates to the early 1900s. The site was once a playground for adventuresome and mostly well-to-do Knoxville sportsmen who traveled to the area for