Displaying items by tag: gatlinburg, tn

Cherokee tribal council member, historian and ethnographer Will West Long holds a traditional Cherokee mask, which he often recreated. He was an active chronicler of Cherokee custom, heritage and tradition and died in 1947 on the Qualla Reservation in Swain County, North Carolina. WikiCommons

As plans gel for massive new developments, has the Eastern Band lost its ancient way?

SEVIERVILLE — The Tennessee Department of Transportation is eyeing a second interchange for exit 407 at Highway 66 along Interstate I-40 in Sevier County. 

Exit 407, already one of the most congested interchanges in Southern Appalachia, accesses the main highway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the nation. The park reported a record 14 million visitors in 2021.

The exit also serves crowds flocking to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.

But the new interchange would primarily serve a 200-acre development to be called Exit 407: The Gateway to Adventure.   

Scheduled to open spring 2023, and fully operational in 2024, it’s expected to attract 6.7 million people annually. The first phase includes a theme park and a 74,000-square-foot convenience store with 120 gas pumps, making it the world’s largest such store.

UT Libraries history project records recollections and remembrances of terrible Smokies wildfires

The results of an ambitious effort by University of Tennessee Libraries to capture the history and personal memories of the devastating 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires are now accessible online five years after the disaster.

The Smokies fires of 2016, which came to a horrible head over that Thanksgiving weekend, killed at least 14 people and countless domestic pets and wild animals. Gale-driven flames burned through thousands of acres in the national park before escaping the boundary and destroying thousands of homes and other structures in Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and smaller communities throughout Sevier County.

“The social, cultural, economic, political, and natural impacts of this event are still being calculated,” according to UT Libraries.

Rising from the Ashes: The Chimney Tops 2 Wildfires Oral History Project, organized with the city of Gatlinburg and the Anna Porter library, collected 140 video and audio interviews with those impacted by the fires, including survivors, government leaders, first responders, scientists, clergy, journalists and mental health experts.

“This project documents one of the most momentous events in modern Tennessee history — in the voices of those who lived it,” said Steve Smith, dean of the UT Libraries in a news release.

“The collected stories document more than tragedy, however; they testify to the resilience of the human spirit. Our team is honored to help preserve these stories for history, study, learning, and research.”

All interviews are preserved within the UT Libraries’ Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives.

The 2016 Thanksgiving wildfire, which began on the Chimneys deep within the national park, was the largest in the eastern U.S. since the 1940s. It burned 17,000 acres, injured at least 200 people and forced the evacuation of thousands, according to UT Libraries. 

“Visitors to the Rising from the Ashes website can approach the topic through different lenses such as the evacuation efforts, the disaster response and recovery, or the ecological impact; hear from medical personnel, business owners, or individuals directly affected by the wildfires; or simply browse through the recorded interviews,” according to a release announcing the final posting of the project.