My brother and his wife, along with my father, are in Gatlinburg this week. This prompts me to reflect on my history as an occasional visitor to this Tennessee town and tourist trap extraordinaire.
If you’ve ever been there, you might agree that the place does have its charms, mainly due to its being nestled among scenic mountains and adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
I grew up on the Gulf Coast, where we had easy access to gorgeous white sand beaches and water-based recreational activities of every sort. But as a result of familiarity, this didn’t seem particularly special.
I can’t remember the year my family first went to the Smokies on vacation, but it probably was during the late 1950s. Thereafter, my parents decided we would go there nearly every summer. Mostly we did and saw the same things, year after year. The Smokies — and Gatlinburg — became our family comfort food, metaphorically speaking.
In those first years we usually pitched a tent in one of the park’s campgrounds. After trying one or two others we determined the Cades Cove campground was the best, so that’s where we always ended up. It became mandatory that every trip include driving the Cades Cove Loop, looking for black bears and visiting the same rustic cabins, churches and grist mill as the year before.
And then there was Gatlinburg.
Roadside America described Gatlinburg and its sister tourist town, Pigeon Forge, as sparkling “like junk jewels on a necklace choking Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”
We always spent at least one whole day walking around the town, browsing the souvenir shops and buying the obligatory box of salt water taffy. One year I decided that my souvenir would be a small taxidermied alligator holding a plastic guitar and wearing a straw sombrero. Looking back, it was a baffling choice for a souvenir of the mountains, but as an emblem of Gatlinburg tackiness it was perfect.
Gatlinburg was once a tiny community inhabited by a few families who had been there generations. The establishment of the national park changed everything. With the main road into the park running straight through town, which in turn was situated literally at the park’s boundary, Gatlinburg boomed. Today, as for the past seven decades, tourism is the town’s whole reason for being.
There are the ubiquitous fudge shops and t-shirt shops, of course, eating establishments of every kind, several motor lodges to choose from for your stay, and numerous “attractions,” including a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum and a legal moonshine distillery. There’s also a ski lift that probably gets more use in the summertime than in winter, hauling tourists up high for a view over the town. Alternately, you can take a tram to the top of a mountain for a round of Hillbilly Golf.
On my visits to Gatlinburg I was more fascinated by the odd little shops that sometimes appeared, usually to be gone within a year or two, that didn’t seem to fit the tourist-town mold. I remember a fossil shop that was there when I was about 12; I could have gotten a small trilobite for a half a dollar and a large one for a couple of bucks, but didn’t. You should see what those things cost now.
Some time after I left home, my parents gave up tent camping and started renting a cabin in Gatlinburg whenever they went. Eventually even this became too much for my mother as her physical and mental state declined to the point that she couldn’t handle a 30-minute car ride, let alone an eight-hour one.
After my mother’s death last year, my brother vowed to take my father back to Gatlinburg because it was “killing” him that he hadn’t been able to go there for so long. That was ten months ago, and I believe they’ve been there at least three times since then.
Although I can’t bring myself to hate the place — Gatlinburg’s location makes it a perfect base of operations for those seeking outdoor adventures — I don’t share this undying love for it, either. In part this is because I like visiting new places when I travel (I’ve done Gatlinburg), but also because, for me, the town’s tourist-trap attractions wear thin pretty fast. On the other hand, I have yet to visit the Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum there, so there’s always that.
When my daughter was attending school in Asheville, North Carolina, some of her fellow students decided to impress a group of visiting Germans by taking them to Gatlinburg. I don’t know what the Germans thought of it, but I think my daughter was embarrassed for them, if not mortified. Why, they could have taken them to Helen, a fake German village in the mountains of north Georgia, instead!
Hate ‘em or love ‘em, places such as Gatlinburg, Myrtle Beach, Branson and others* showcase a particular side of America that I would miss if they were to disappear, even though I don’t tend to put them on my personal destination list. Knowing that such places continue to exist and thrive, despite — or because — of their kitschiness, is comforting.
“Kitschy” describes things that many consider ugly, without style, or false, but that are enjoyed by others, often for that very reason. Most tourist towns fit this to a t. However, they also speak to and are creatures of a slice of America that the snobs can never understand.
Tourist-Town-Gatlinburg came into its own during a time of prosperity, a booming middle class, and the postwar love affair with the automobile. Absent those ingredients, it might never have become what it is.
This, which was part of one of the most successful ad campaigns ever, says it all:
That sense of optimism for the future, that I am just old enough to recall and which for me is symbolized by everything from Googie architecture to cars that looked like rocket ships, largely dissipated years ago.
As long as the crowds are still flocking to Gatlinburg, though, perhaps all is not lost. May the taffy machines forever roll!
* On a car trip with my own family one year, we drove through Sedona, Arizona, home of famous red-rock formations and a magnet for New Age types and other spiritual seekers. The main strip through town did not impress, though; my wife commented disdainfully that it “looks like Gatlinburg.”
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