The former getaway community fell victim to the coming of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Now, part of it will come to life again.
Photo Above: Elkmont dates to the early 1900s, when it was established as a cluster of summer cottages in what is now part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Courtesy Carroll McMahan.
Elkmont has stood like a ghost town in the Great Smoky Mountains for decades—a cluster of cottages and getaways that once welcomed the affluent and residents of nearby Knoxville, Tennessee.
Now, a new Elkmont era has dawned in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—with renovations of some structures and the removal of others, says historian Carroll McMahan, the special project facility coordinator for the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce.
“Technically, you could have called it a ghost town, but it has a whole other story to it,” says McMahan, the author of “Elkmont’s Uncle Lem Ownby: Sage of the Smokies,” published in 2013.
For years, McMahan says, “There had been talk of tearing down the ‘summer houses,’ as they’re called.”
About a decade ago, McMahan says, the national park received some stimulus money to restore structures like The Appalachian Club and The Spence House, both used for rentals in Sevier County, about seven miles from Gatlinburg.
Later, when about 70 structures stood at Elkmont, a decision was made to save just 17 of the cabins—not for habitation but for historical interpretation, says McMahan.
“The plan is to restore them so they are structurally sound enough so visitors can walk inside of them to see what they look like,” McMahan says. “In its heyday, Elkmont was a very nice place.”
These century-old cabins, mostly made of wood, “had been abandoned” or their owners were “forced to evacuate,” McMahan says. “The park service required that the people who had the lease agreement all move out in 1992. They had been empty since 1992.”
The story above appears in our March/April 2020 issue.
