Hiker discovers an abandoned town inside Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park

JacaRanda · Oct 2, 2014

Immediately thought of Sharon and Mr. SCraig when Wifey sent this to me.

Have either of you heard of it, or better yet been there?

hiker-discovers-an-abandoned-town-inside-tennessees-great-smoky-mountains-national-park

Sorry about the bad link

astroNikon · Oct 2, 2014

link does not work

Designer · Oct 2, 2014

Lots of references to this, but I just picked the first one:

Hiker discovers an abandoned town inside Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park | Roadtrippers

sm4him · Oct 2, 2014

Astro, try this.

That headline made it sound like something nobody else knew about, but Elkmont is a pretty popular area around here. It IS abandoned, but hardly undiscovered. The history of Elkmont (or Wonderland, named for its hotel) is pretty fascinating. Here's another link: Elkmont History in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (for some reason, it won't let me make this a hyperlink without turning the entire paragraph into a link).

Somewhere I've got another article about Elkmont that was really interesting; can't find it right now though.

Elkmont is most famous, though, for being one of only two places in the world (and the only place in the US) where you can see synchronized fireflies, and it is a sight to behold!
I never go to see the fireflies anymore, haven't for many years, because it has become such a huge tourist affair that only a certain number of people can even get in every year; I just don't even bother to try. But I think one of these days I'll do it again. I was a kid last time I ever saw it, and didn't fully appreciate what I was viewing.

EDIT: Wikipedia's article on Elkmont is about as extensive as anything else I've seen.

EDIT 2: I stand corrected about the fireflies. I'd always heard that the only two spots were Elkmont and somewhere in South Asia. But they've discovered a handful of other spots in America in just the past few years, it seems. Folks in PA and SC: I'd advise you to go check this out next summer, before it becomes as much of a tourist circus as the Elkmont viewings!
Here's a good site showing the fireflies and locations to view them.

sm4him · Oct 2, 2014

The Wonderland Hotel at Elkmont was really pretty cool, and many around here (myself included) think it is an absolute travesty that its owners and/or the Park did not maintain it and let it decay to the point that, about a decade ago, it pretty much just collapsed. Really sad.

JacaRanda · Oct 2, 2014

sm4him said:
Astro, try this.

That headline made it sound like something nobody else knew about, but Elkmont is a pretty popular area around here. It IS abandoned, but hardly undiscovered. The history of Elkmont (or Wonderland, named for its hotel) is pretty fascinating. Here's another link: Elkmont History in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (for some reason, it won't let me make this a hyperlink without turning the entire paragraph into a link).

Somewhere I've got another article about Elkmont that was really interesting; can't find it right now though.

Elkmont is most famous, though, for being one of only two places in the world (and the only place in the US) where you can see synchronized fireflies, and it is a sight to behold!
I never go to see the fireflies anymore, haven't for many years, because it has become such a huge tourist affair that only a certain number of people can even get in every year; I just don't even bother to try. But I think one of these days I'll do it again. I was a kid last time I ever saw it, and didn't fully appreciate what I was viewing.

EDIT: Wikipedia's article on Elkmont is about as extensive as anything else I've seen.

EDIT 2: I stand corrected about the fireflies. I'd always heard that the only two spots were Elkmont and somewhere in South Asia. But they've discovered a handful of other spots in America in just the past few years, it seems. Folks in PA and SC: I'd advise you to go check this out next summer, before it becomes as much of a tourist circus as the Elkmont viewings!
Here's a good site showing the fireflies and locations to view them.

I have not seen a firefly since moving from Kansas City in the early 70's

I would love to see them in mass like the pictures shown in your link!

sm4him · Oct 2, 2014

JacaRanda said:
sm4him said:

Astro, try this.

That headline made it sound like something nobody else knew about, but Elkmont is a pretty popular area around here. It IS abandoned, but hardly undiscovered. The history of Elkmont (or Wonderland, named for its hotel) is pretty fascinating. Here's another link: Elkmont History in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (for some reason, it won't let me make this a hyperlink without turning the entire paragraph into a link).

Somewhere I've got another article about Elkmont that was really interesting; can't find it right now though.

Elkmont is most famous, though, for being one of only two places in the world (and the only place in the US) where you can see synchronized fireflies, and it is a sight to behold!
I never go to see the fireflies anymore, haven't for many years, because it has become such a huge tourist affair that only a certain number of people can even get in every year; I just don't even bother to try. But I think one of these days I'll do it again. I was a kid last time I ever saw it, and didn't fully appreciate what I was viewing.

EDIT: Wikipedia's article on Elkmont is about as extensive as anything else I've seen.

EDIT 2: I stand corrected about the fireflies. I'd always heard that the only two spots were Elkmont and somewhere in South Asia. But they've discovered a handful of other spots in America in just the past few years, it seems. Folks in PA and SC: I'd advise you to go check this out next summer, before it becomes as much of a tourist circus as the Elkmont viewings!
Here's a good site showing the fireflies and locations to view them.

Click to expand...

I have not seen a firefly since moving from Kansas City in the early 70's I would love to see them in mass like the pictures shown in your link!

You know, fireflies are something I never thought I took for granted, but I guess I do kinda. A couple of years ago, a "niece" (really my sister-in-law's niece, but that's too complicated, and in my family, if you're "kinda" family, you ARE family!) came out here from California for the first time. It was during the summer, so the first night she was here, we were all sitting outside at my brother's house…and then the fireflies started. I have not seen such absolute DELIGHT on the face of an Adult in…maybe ever! She had NO idea such things existed; she was so excited it was comical!

I don't take them for granted, though, in the sense that they always transport me back to childhood. I love spending a summer night just sitting out in the backyard watching them. Not as many now as there were when I was little, but there are still a LOT of them.
Now, seeing them all light up at the exact SAME time, like they do at Elkmont--well, that just takes the delight to an entirely new level!

Civchic · Oct 3, 2014

I once had to pull off the road to watch an entire cornfield lit up by fireflies. No camera, all by myself - it was one of the most magical things I've ever seen.

lambertpix · Oct 3, 2014

Very cool. A few years ago, my son & I took a rafting trip down the New River in WV, and our guide was telling us about some of the (now abandoned) little mining towns along the river in between us being tossed around like wet rags. ;-) I'd always thought that might be a fun hunt, too, provided I'd be able to stay on public property & all....

sm4him · Oct 3, 2014

There have been a number of times, out hiking with our scout troop in the Smokies, that we've come across the remains of an old house, or just a chimney standing in the middle of nowhere, even old cemeteries seemingly just out in the middle of nowhere.
There were so many families and communities displaced when that area became a National Park. Some--most, perhaps--were offered lifetime leases so they could remain on the property that had been theirs until they passed, but the truth was that there were so many restrictions in place about logging, farming, etc. that it wasn't truly a viable option for many of them and so they eventually simply abandoned their homes and left them there to be reclaimed by nature.

Cades Cove was really the only community that the Park preserved, and even there, what we see today are just a very, very small handful of the homes and buildings that were in that community prior to the National Park taking it over. Most of the names you see in the Cove--Tipton, Oliver, Shields--were the ones who stuck it out the longest, but most left the area by the 1940s and their homes just rotted away, leaving what little foundation there might have been and perhaps a chimney.

The last person to actually live in the cove was a guy named Kermit Caughron, and his wife Lois. He was descended from two of the original families and had lived in the Cove all his life; he was about 20 when the park took over. He actually remained there until his death in 1999, and at that point, his wife moved out of the Cove as well.
Sadly, the Park Service then tore down his house in 2002, a move I'll never understand. They did leave the barn, which his father had built, but it was destroyed in a storm on Christmas Eve just a few years ago.

Even today, if you go up to the Cove and do some hiking around, especially on some of the lesser used trails, you'll come across evidence of lives lived before. it's kinda sad, but very interesting.

limr · Oct 3, 2014

I love fireflies! We don't have the synchronous displays here but we do get pretty interesting shows during the summer

As for ghost towns, w

e've got Doodletown here in New York: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/nyregion/westchester/28rdoodle.html?pagewanted=all

It was taken over using eminent domain to build a ski resort that never materialized. It was known for snakes and it still is. The interesting thing is that former residents and their descendants still retain rights to the cemetery and so it's still a "working" cemetery, even though it is a ghost town with nothing more than a couple of buildings and a lot of ruins. Doodletown, New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The only pictures I have from hiking are a few of accidental panoramas using a Holga (it has a 6x6 mask and a 6x4.5 mask. I had the 6x6 mask but accidentally set the counter window for 6x4.5, so I ended up with overlapping frames):

(Click on them to see them larger)

I also had a couple of pinhole shots that came out okay. Kinda spooky: