page_title: Elkmont, Tennessee
section_title: Logging era
hierarchical_section_title: Elkmont, Tennessee / History / Logging era
caption_attribution_description: English: Elkmont, Tennessee, now part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Sevier County, Tennessee, United States
context_page_description: 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 Little River Lumber Company established the town of Elkmont in 1908 as a base for its logging operations in the upper Little River and Jakes Creek areas. By 1910, the company began selling plots of land to hunting and fishing enthusiasts from Knoxville, who established the "Appalachian Club" just south of the logging town. In 1912, a resort hotel, the Wonderland Park Hotel, was constructed on a hill overlooking Elkmont. A group of Knoxville businessmen purchased the Wonderland in 1919 and established the "Wonderland Club." Over the next two decades, the Appalachian Club and Wonderland Club evolved into elite vacation areas where East Tennessee's wealthy could gather and socialize.
context_section_description: In the 1880s, Knoxville businessman John L. English began a small-scale logging project along Jakes Creek.  To transport the logs to a sawmill on the outskirts of Knoxville, English constructed a series of splash dams along Little River.  When the logs were ready to be moved, the floodgates of these dams were opened and the rushing torrent carried the logs downstream.  While English managed a moderate profit, his venture had folded by 1900, possibly because of a disastrous flood along Little River in 1899.
  In 1901, Pennsylvania entrepreneur Colonel Wilson B. Townsend purchased 86,000 acres (348 km²) of land along Little River and established the Little River Lumber Company. Townsend set up a band saw mill in Tuckaleechee Cove, laying the foundation for the town that would later bear his name.  Rather than splash dams, which are at the mercy of the volatile mountain streams, Townsend constructed a logging railroad between the company's sawmill in Tuckaleechee and the river's upper reaches, all the way to the Three Forks area (where the river absorbs Fish Camp Prong and Rough Creek).  The railroad was later extended to Walland, connecting it to Maryville and Knoxville.  The railroad employed 10 Shay engines to move the log-filled flatcars along the river valley.  Logging skidders were used to pull trees from the steeper slopes.  Elkmont was established in 1908 as a transfer station where logs were moved from gear-operated trains (used for reaching higher elevations) to rod-operated trains for transport to the sawmill at Townsend.
  Early Elkmont was a typical temporary logging camp.  These camps bore a resemblance to later Depression-era shanty towns.  Shanty houses (or "set off" houses), a post office, a transient hotel, a commissary, and sheds critical to railroad maintenance were the town's only buildings.  Many loggers lived in boarding houses, and some crossed Sugarland Mountain via a trail connecting Elkmont to the Sugarlands.  As logging operations progressed, it became necessary to move the camp higher up the mountain slopes to the south.  The company managed this by loading the shanties onto railroad flatcars and moving them to pre-constructed foundations using a logging crane. Although the logging camps moved, Elkmont remained the company's primary base of operations in the upper Little River valley.
  In 1926, Townsend sold most of his Little River Lumber tract to the newly created Great Smoky Mountains Park Commission, although he had been given permission to continue logging for most of the next decade. By the time the company ceased operations in 1939, it had produced 750 million board feet (1.8 million m³) of lumber.  In the 1960s, the park service built the current campground over the site of the former logging town.  Little remains from Elkmont's logging period, although three of the later resort cottages (including the Addicks and Mayo cabins) are believed to have been modified Little River Lumber Company shanty houses.
caption: Elkmont in 1915
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3766", "Image ImageLength": "2969", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2007:12:21 11:48:27", "Image ExifOffset": "2272", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:12:21 11:48:27", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:12:21 11:48:27", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "630", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}