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Tremont is a region in the northwestern Great Smoky Mountains National Park, located in the southeastern United States. Formerly home to a pioneer Appalachian community and logging town, Tremont is now the location of the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont.
Tremont is situated along the Middle Prong of Little River a few miles south of Townsend in Blount County, Tennessee. "Tremont" can refer to the former logging town of Tremont or the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, but it generally applies to Middle Prong's entire watershed between Miry Ridge to the east and Defeat Ridge to the west. Both of these ridges run perpendicular to the main crest of the Great Smokies, which rises several thousand feet above Tremont to the south.
Middle Prong is formed by the confluence of Lynn Camp Prong, which flows down from the southeast, and Thunderhead Prong, which flows down from the southwest. From this junction, Middle Prong flows north for another 6 miles (9.7 km) to its mouth along Little River at an area known as the Townsend Y. About halfway between the Lynn Camp-Thunderhead junction and the Y, a narrow bottomland known as Walker Valley has been cut as Middle Prong absorbs several small streams flowing down from Meigs Mountain and Fodderstack Mountain. The Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is located in Walker Valley.
Tremont Road runs parallel to Middle Prong, and is paved from its intersection along Little River Road to the Institute at Walker Valley. A gravel road extends for another three miles (5 km) to a cul-de-sac and parking area at the Lynn Camp-Thunderhead junction. Along Little River Road, Cades Cove is approximately 7 miles (11 km) to the west and Elkmont is 13 miles (21 km) to the east.
William Marion Walker (1838–1919), who was born in nearby Tuckaleechee Cove, and his first wife Nancy Caylor were the first known permanent settlers along Middle Prong. Walker arrived in the area around 1859 and settled in the valley that now bears his name. The Great Smokies Institute at Tremont is located on what was once Walker's house and immediate farmland.
Even in his own time, Walker was something of a legend. His sharpshooting skills were so well known, he was often barred from shooting contests. [1] Walker kept over a hundred bee stands, which he robbed without the use of mask or smoke, and sold the honey in nearby Tuckaleechee. During the U.S. Civil War, he aided struggling families in Tuckaleechee by going from house to house to cut firewood and do basic chores. [2]
While Walker was well liked and respected throughout the northwestern Smokies, he was always a source of controversy due to his practice of polygamy. Walker, who was very religious, believed that Biblical scripture allowed him to take more than one wife. In 1864, he married Mary Ann Moore and a few years later married a third wife, Mary Moll Stinnett. Walker eventually fathered a total of 26 children, although several died in infancy. He allowed tenant farmers to move into Walker Valley, and a small community developed. Walker constructed three gristmills to accommodate the growing community. [3] [4]
As large-scale logging operations left much of the Eastern United States deforested by the late 19th century, logging companies turned to the remote virgin forests of Southern Appalachia to meet the nation's growing demand for timber. Taking advantage of recent band saw and logging railroad innovations, small logging firms began to spring up around the Great Smokies.
The first logging venture to reach Walker Valley and the Middle Prong area was that of John English, a Knoxville businessman whose company began cutting timber in nearby Tuckaleechee Cove in the early 1880s. English used a series of splash dams to move the logs down Little River to a mill on the outskirts of Knoxville. One such splash dam was located at the mouth of Spruce Flats along Middle Prong, just above Walker Valley. While English's lumbering venture turned a small profit, a flood along Little River apparently wiped out his splash dams in the late 1890s, and his venture had folded by 1900. [5]
While Will Walker allowed English to build a splash dam and do minor logging in the Middle Prong watershed, he disliked the thought of large-scale logging operations mowing down his valley's virgin forests. In 1901, Colonel Wilson B. Townsend and several associates formed the Little River Lumber Company and bought up 86,000 acres (350 km2) of land along Little River between Tuckaleechee and the river's source on the slopes of Clingman's Dome. Walker, however, refused to sell Middle Prong, forcing Townsend's operations eastward to what is now Elkmont. [6]
Townsend set up a band saw mill in Tuckaleechee, and the town that bears his name grew up in the vicinity. He formed the Little River Railroad to connect the mill with the Southern Railroad terminal at nearby Walland, and with able engineers managed to lay railroad tracts all the way to the upper reaches of Little River and Jakes Creek.
In 1918, Walker suffered a stroke that left him largely incapacitated. On December 26 of that year, he finally agreed to sell Middle Prong to Little River Lumber after Townsend gave him his word that he wouldn't harvest trees along Thunderhead Prong. Six months later, Walker died after suffering a second stroke. On Townsend's orders, a small train carried Walker's coffin ceremoniously to the Bethel Baptist Cemetery in Tuckaleechee, where it rests today. [7]
Although Townsend sold his Little River tract to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Commission in 1926, he did so with the agreement that he could continue logging in the area for 15 years. [8] After logging operations had commenced at Elkmont in 1925, Townsend ordered the tracks to be pulled up and moved to Middle Prong. A base for the Middle Prong operation was set up at the junction of Lynn Camp Prong and Thunderhead Prong. This base quickly grew into a small town, which was given the name Tremont, a combination of "tree" and "mountain." [9]
While Tremont remained a base of operations, the logging camps moved further and further up Lynn Camp Prong as the operation progressed. These camps consisted of small shanty houses that could be loaded onto flatcars and moved from camp to camp. The base camp at Tremont consisted of a post office, hotel, maintenance sheds, a general store, and a community center that served as a church, school, and movie theater. [10]
Dora Cope, who lived at Tremont in the late 1920s and 1930s, later recalled various aspects of life in the logging camps. Cope remembered the camps being infested with rats and vulnerable to fires and the unpredictable weather of the Smokies. Cope spoke of Middle Prong as a "crystal playground" that was serene and calm on a typical day, but could change quickly with heavy rainfall:
...sometimes without warning, a heavy thunderstorm high on the mountain changed it into a roaring, tearing monster. At night, after a storm, we could hear the giant rocks being pushed and crushed together by its force. Trees, loosened by the flood, crashed into the water to be swept downstream. [11]
As with Elkmont to the east, Townsend sought to promote the Tremont area as a summer resort. The Tremont Hotel opened in 1926 to provide housing for loggers and transients, but as the camps moved further up the valley, the hotel was opened up to tourists. The hotels at both Elkmont and Tremont developed a reputation as licentious places among the mountain people, as Cope recalled:
The rumors and stories of what went on in the hotels kept the natives entertained. Some thought of them as the Sodom and Gomorrah of the mountains. A few local girls were employed as maids at both hotels. Pretty, young daughters were warned to stay away from the places. [12]
Townsend had promised Will Walker that Thunderhead Prong would not be cut, a promise he kept until his death in 1935. With Townsend out of the way, however, the Little River Lumber Company proceeded to harvest Thunderhead Prong. [13] In December 1938, the last trees were cut in the Tremont area.
While the logging operations provided an economic boost to the northwestern Smokies, the rapid deforestation of Little River's watershed proved devastating for the river's ecosystem. With the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 and the end of logging operations in 1938, however, the forest quickly regrew. The Civilian Conservation Corps converted Little River Railroad's railroad beds into roads and trails. Today, other than the occasional stray skidder cable or railroad tie, there is little immediate evidence that logging ever took place in the area.
In 1969, Maryville College, with the help of the National Park Service, established the Tremont Environmental Education Center at the site of a former Job Corps center in Walker Valley. The purpose of the center was to provide a first-hand approach to understanding the environment and ecology of the mountains. [4] In the early 1970s, the center hosted the Youth Conservation Corps during the summer. In 1980, the Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association assumed control of the education center, and in 1985 the name was changed to the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont to further acknowledge its ties to the park. [14] In 2014, Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont renewed its partnership with Maryville College. [15]
Blount County is a county located in the East Tennessee Grand Division of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, its population was 135,280. The county seat is Maryville, which is also the county's largest city. Blount County is included in the Knoxville metropolitan area.
Townsend is a city in Blount County, Tennessee. The city was chartered in 1921 by persons who were involved with the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company. The population was 550 at the 2020 census. For thousands of years a site of Native American occupation by varying cultures, Townsend is one of three "gateways" to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It has several museums and attractions relating to the natural and human history of the Great Smokies.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The border between the two states runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 13 million visitors in 2023, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.
The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains and form part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province. The range is sometimes called the Smoky Mountains, and the name is commonly shortened to the Smokies. The Smokies are best known as the home of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which protects most of the range. The park was established in 1934 and, with over 11 million visits per year, is the most visited national park in the United States.
Little River is a 60-mile (97 km) river in Tennessee which drains a 380-square-mile (980 km2) area containing some of the most spectacular scenery in the southeastern United States. The first 18 miles (29 km) of the river are all located within the borders of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The remaining 42 miles (68 km) flow out of the mountains through Blount County to join the Tennessee River at Fort Loudon Lake in Knox County.
Elkmont is a region situated in the upper Little River valley of the Great Smoky Mountains of Sevier County, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Throughout its history, the valley has been home to a pioneer Appalachian community, a logging town, and a resort community. Today, Elkmont is home to a large campground, ranger station, and historic district maintained by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The Foothills Parkway is a national parkway which traverses the foothills of the northern Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. The 72.1-mile (114 km) parkway will connect U.S. Route 129 along the Little Tennessee River in the west with Interstate 40 (I-40) along the Pigeon River in the east.
Thunderhead Mountain is a 5,527-foot (1,685 m) mountain in the west-central part of the Great Smoky Mountains, located in the southeastern United States. Rising along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, the mountain dominates the western Smokies. The Appalachian Trail crosses its summit, making it a popular hiking destination. Rocky Top, a knob on the western part of the mountain's summit ridge, shares its name with a popular Tennessee state song.
The Wonderland Hotel was a hotel built in 1911 at Elkmont, Sevier County, Tennessee by the Wonderland Club Company and was dismantled and partially preserved in 2005 by the National Park Service. It burned down in early 2016.
The Little River Railroad is a historic class III railroad that operated between Maryville and Elkmont, Tennessee, from 1901 to 1939.
The Sugarlands is a valley in Tennessee within the north-central Great Smoky Mountains, located in the southeastern United States. Formerly home to a string of small Appalachian communities, the valley is now the location of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park headquarters and the Sugarlands Visitor Center. Lying just south of Gatlinburg, the Sugarlands is one of the park's most popular access points.
Little Greenbrier is the name of a former Appalachian community that is now an historical area in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. The community was situated in a valley rising from Metcalf Bottoms along Little River to the upper slopes of Cove Mountain, in the northeastern section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Little Greenbrier was once known simply as "Greenbrier," but "Little" was added to distinguish it from the larger Greenbrier located between Mount Le Conte and Mount Guyot to the east.
The Oconaluftee is the valley of the Oconaluftee River in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Formerly the site of a Cherokee village and an Appalachian community, the valley is now North Carolina's main entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Greenbrier is a valley in the northern Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. Now a recreational area located within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Greenbrier was once home to several Appalachian communities.
Walland is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Blount County, Tennessee. Its population was 281 as of the 2020 census. Walland is the site of a post office and is the place name associated with zip code 37886, which covers an area beyond the Walland community.
Hazel Creek is a tributary stream of the Little Tennessee River in the southwestern Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. The creek's bottomlands were home to several pioneer Appalachian communities and logging towns before its incorporation into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hazel Creek is now a back country campsite and historical area.
The Roundtop Trail is an American hiking trail in Sevier County and Blount County sections of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The trail traverses the crest of Roundtop, a 3,077-foot (938 m) mountain that straddles the park's northern boundary. This trail, which passes through a thick forest of pine and oak and provides vistas of the valleys to the north and the mountains to the south, is one of the least-used trails in the park.
The Sugarland Mountain Trail is an American hiking trail, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Sevier County, Tennessee. The trail traverses Sugarland Mountain, a massive ridge running perpendicular to the main crest of the Smokies and effectively dividing the park's north-central section from its northwestern section. Sugarland Mountain is flanked by the deep upper valleys of two of the park's major watersheds— the West Fork of the Little Pigeon River and Little River. The trail passes through several forest types, including deciduous forest at lower elevations, heaths ("hells") along the mountain's backbone formations, and a stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest in the upper elevations. Occasional breaks in the foliage allow for views of Mount Le Conte and Sevier County to the east and Blanket Mountain and the ridges above Elkmont to the west.
The Meigs Mountain Trail is an American hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Sevier County, Tennessee. The trail traverses the northern slopes of Meigs Mountain in the northwest section of the park, connecting Jakes Creek in the Elkmont area with Lumber Ridge in the Tremont area. The Meigs Mountain Trail, when joined with the 4.1-mile (6.6 km) Lumber Ridge Trail and the first 0.4 miles (0.64 km) of the Jakes Creek Trail, is part of a 10.5-mile (16.9 km) continuous path connecting the Appalachian Club section of Elkmont with the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. In the early 20th century, the logging communities that formed at Elkmont and Tremont branched out across the relatively broad northern slopes of Meigs Mountain. Other than a crude mountain cemetery, the occasional detritus, and a few rock walls, however, very little remains of the mountain's former inhabitants.
The Alex Cole Cabin is a historic house in Sevier County, Tennessee, United States, along Roaring Fork within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The last remaining building of the community of Sugarlands, it was built by Albert Alexander "Alex" Cole (1870–1958). The cabin was originally located at 35°40′0″N83°31′17″W, across the Little Pigeon River from what is now the "Quiet Walkway" opposite the Huskey Gap Trailhead, just off Newfound Gap Road. After being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s, the cabin was moved to the Jim Bales Place along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.
35°37′15″N83°40′39″W / 35.62083°N 83.67750°W
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