Fading Away.

Carole and I took advantage of the briefly opened Little River Road to drive to Elkmont to see what was left of the old Wonderland Hotel. I covered this place before in my blog. It was once the only active hotel within the borders of the Park. But it had been grandfathered in and the deal had an end date. It had been known for some time that the Park Service wanted to get rid of the Wonderland, and basically I agree with their decision to end the concession and demolish the building. After all, the Park was created to protect mainly the ecosystems there and not to preserve a rickety, poorly engineered hotel.

Still, having stayed in the hotel (we booked a room when we heard they'd lost an extension on their concession and would soon be closing up forever), and having known people who stayed there many times over the years, it was still a sad day when it closed down.

In the intervening years, with no one to repair the place, the elements have had their way with it. There was even a fire that burned down the main building which is no longer there in even a ruined state. Just some stairs and the remnants of the brick chimney.

The part of the hotel that is still standing is the section where Carole and I stayed. That is, it had the bedroom we rented during our trip there. Even though I saw it as it was winding down, I liked the old place. It was old and rickety and the bed in our room was ridiculously soft. But it was really quiet and nice. Quaint is the word that always occurs to me when I need to describe it. It was a part of America that is mainly gone, now. The kind of Park experience that visitors expected during the wild and exploitative days of the National Parks. Sad as it is to see it go, that kind of thing really has no place in our National Parks. You can still witness a form of it in many of our western National Parks (Yellowstone, Yosemite, Crater Lake, etc.).

But the old Wonderland is almost gone, these days. Just a few shaky structures still holding up, ready for the first big windstorm to finish knocking them over.

The stairs that once led up from the road/railroad to the Wonderland.

All that's left of the fireplace in the main lodge.

This was the section that had the bedroom Carole and I used. Ours was on the other side. I remember walking down the hallways, rooms on either side. We were on the ground floor, communal restrooms at the end of the hall.

This building is almost gone. Last time we were there it was in okay shape. Now the roof has completely given way and most of the floor is also gone.

At the rear of the Wonderland. Our room looked out on these woods. Of course there weren't trees growing up to crowd out the building in those days.

This staircase actually led from the main building to a breezeway that went to lodging rooms. I remember exploring that building that is now completely gone, save for those steps and that crumb of a chimney.

Elkmont Dissolves

Anyone who know the history of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park understands that there were towns within the borders of the Park and that those people who lived in them were bought out. Some were allowed to remain there until they died of natural causes. But most took the funds and bought elsewhere and moved out of the Park boundaries. The entire town of Cataloochee took flight and that place is utterly gone.


One of the last places to go was a resort community within the part of the Park called Elkmont. This was a small village of vacation homes built by middle class families. The Park Service allowed the owners to continue to use their vacation homes for a very long time, indeed. It was not that long ago that the final family finally lost their terms on their cabin and packed up for the last time.


To my way of thinking, it's good to see all of these places gone from the Park. There are endless thousands of miles outside the Park where you can go to see vacation homes of people with more money and leisure time on their hands than most of us. As with the old Wonderland Hotel in Elkmont, I had assumed that the Park Service would allow the structures to just collapse in on themselves and let Nature take its course in the dissolution of these cabins.


But, predictably, enough whiners gave vent to calls of so-called "history" and the fate of the offensive little buildings was in doubt. Finally, a few were chosen to be preserved, using up funds that would have been far better served in other capacities in the Park. But most of them will be allowed to go the way of all dust, and some will be torn down. Soon, the old Elkmont vacation community will be absorbed by the native forests of the Great Smoky Mountains.


I, for one, will be very glad to see them gone.


Here, though, is a video I took of part of the village a few years ago when the houses were not in quite as bad a shape as they are today:

GOOD RIDDANCE!

Found Photos

Back in 2003 I was just getting my old hiking wanderlust rekindled. One of my first trips back to get into finding the old solitude again was a quick car-camping trip to the Smokies in November of that year. I ran up to the Park alone with my two-man tent and a few supplies and camped at Elkmont. I only did a couple of hikes before heading back home, but I had to get back up to the high country again.

I stumbled upon these photos on disk. Taken back in the day before I had a digital camera. These were with my old Canon 35mm film camera. Among the last photos I took with that camera, I'm sure.

One thing that I'm not sure of is the month I took the hikes. But I didn't get them developed until November of 2003.

Red spruce along the Alum Cave Bluffs Trail.

One of the views that drew me up there.

Peregrine Peak along the Alum Cave Bluffs Trail. When I was younger I always wanted to bushwhack to this peak and climb it. Now I'm not so sure I could handle the attempt.

Myrtle Point on the top of Mount LeConte.

My Kind of Town: An Abandoned One

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is unique for many reasons. One thing that makes it stand out from so many other parks of similar size is that it was created from largely private lands during the Great Depression. Because of this, the Park Service felt the need to negotiate, along with cash payments, certain grants from which other National Parks are exempt. Among the privileges granted in this earlier time which have grown problematic are that no entrance fees be charged, that most of the park is accessible and open to horseback riders, and that a small section of the park contained private lodges and second homes for which leases were extended until well after the establishment of the park boundaries.

(All that remains of the old Wonderland Hotel. My wife and I stayed here shortly before they lost their National Park lease. Our stay was pleasant, and in retrospect, it would have been nice if the Park Service had continued the lease/concession on that old-style hotel.)



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This last agreement has proven, in recent years, to be a bit of a legal pain in the ass for the Park Service. When the park was formed, an area adjacent to Gatlinburg known as Elkmont contained a hotel, several private lodges, and dozens of vacation homes owned by wealthy landholders. With the added clout of these wealthy folk, they were able to negotiate lifetime leases that extended their ownership in most cases until the early 1970s, and in at least one case, the year 2001. The hotel, known as The Wonderland Hotel, was operated on a concession basis until 1992, much in the tradition of some of the lodges and hotels in our western National Parks.

(We wandered around empty ground where once we had stayed in a rustic hotel room.)

The lease/concession on The Wonderland was not renewed and the hotel was shut down. The many cabins, and the hotel, were then allowed to begin to slowly deteriorate while the Park decided how to best proceed to remove these structures and allow the remainder of Elkmont to revert to its natural state as a second growth forest.

All of this would have come to pass years ago were it not for a group of meddlesome troublemakers who decided that these rotting, worthless structures were “historical landmarks” and that they should be protected and renovated. Fortunately for those of us who wish to see the parklands restored to their natural state, the bulk of the Wonderland Hotel finally did collapse and was removed. However, this left several lodge buildings and dozens of cabins still standing in various parts of Elkmont. If left to their original plans, the Park Service would long ago have removed these unsightly shacks and allowed the forest to regenerate. But because of various legal challenges, these stacks of rotting wood, rusting tin, and tilting rock are still mucking up the scenery.



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Here’s hoping that spontaneous combustion, Father Zeus, Thundering Thor, or some enterprising gremlin will destroy these disgusting monuments to minor wealth and privilege. There are, quite literally, thousands of similar disgusting developments ringing in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a virtual cancer of urban sprawl. It will be most welcome to see this horrid one gone from its place within one of our most beautiful and precious National Parks. May Elkmont soon begin to be allowed to revert to its natural state as a grand cove hardwood forest.