The Tourist Trap Nightmare of
the Smoky Mountains
Gatlinburg promotes hillbilly
stereotypes for fun and profit

During the course of my life I’ve lived in a number of tourist destinations. When I was a kid my family lived in the Panhandle of Florida and then in Hawaii. When I was in high school we lived a few miles north of Gulf Shores, Alabama. After college I bartended in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and I’ve resided in the High Country since the late 1980s. So it’s safe to say that I know a thing or two about touristy areas.

Believe it or not, approximately 10 million visitors come Gatlinburg, Tenn. every year. Photo by Jeff Eason

None of the places I’ve lived, or visited for that matter, prepared me for the tourist trap that is Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And it is with a repulsive shudder down my spine that I will warn anyone curious about Gatlinburg that they should go home, unpack their bags, and never again mention the name of that unholy town to their family or travel agent.

My experience with G-burg started innocently enough when my mother-in-law Judy suggested that the family spend New Year’s Eve at a big cabin in the Smoky Mountains. With the words “cabin” and “mountains” floating in front of my face like delicious night crawlers on stainless steel hooks, I bit the bait and said, “Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea!”

And, indeed, that part of the vacation lived up to its billing. The cabin, located about two miles outside of downtown Gatlinburg, was large yet cozy, new yet rustic, simply decorated but featuring both satellite television and a pool table. It was the perfect place to settle in with the in-laws and swap a few late Christmas presents.

The next day the whole gang (seven adults, three kids) traveled to downtown Gatlinburg to take in the sights and do a little shopping. If you’ve ever seen those insane video clips of tens of thousands of worshippers trying to get to Mecca on the exact same holy day, you have an idea of what the traffic is like in downtown Gatlinburg. The town is only about ten miles from Pigeon Forge and Dollywood, but visitors are advised to circumvent the southeastern portion of the state to get from one to the other. That’s because the entire section of US 441 between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge has been in a permanent state of gridlock since the mid-nineties.

Gatlinburg only has about 4,000 permanent residents but on any given day of the year you will find close to 100,000 people trying find parking spaces so they can visit Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, play miniature golf or shop at one of the hundreds of small, decrepit downtown shops.

I can only describe the shops in downtown Gatlinburg by saying that they make the midway at the State Fair in Raleigh look like Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It is, without a doubt, the only town I’ve seen where the shops have carny-like barkers trying to get suckers to come inside. Ironically, nearly every souvenir I found in the shops of Gatlinburg had “Made in China” stamped on its underside.

Considering that Gatlinburg is considered by many people to be the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I find it strange that it has so many shops devoted to hunting. Camouflage T-shirts with funny sayings about hunting are apparently all the rage this season and I saw at least a dozen shops in Gatlinburg offering tees with clever quips printed on them such as “Spotlighting: What Rednecks Do After Dark,” “We Now Interrupt This Marriage for Hunting Season,” “Squirrel: It’s What’s for Dinner” and “Inbred and Venison Fed.”

Before visiting Gatlinburg, the only thing I knew about its restaurants and bars was that the narrator of Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” tracked down his father in a Gatlinburg watering hole. That song, however, never mentions how long he had to wait for a table. Most of the restaurants we saw had lines out of the door as hungry tourists waited for surly service and cold food. I’m not a culinary snob—I love a good chili-dog and onion rings as much as anyone—but all three of my trips to Gatlinburg restaurants were a waste of my time, money and taste buds. After three miserable trips to Gatlinburg restaurants that shall remain nameless, I was ready to join the hunters for a plate of squirrel and venison.

Although Gatlinburg is, generally speaking, a vacation destination for southern Americans, I saw and heard a number of visitors who were obviously from foreign countries. I had to tell myself that they were just passing through town on their way to nicer spots in the United States, because if I dwelt too long on the possibility that Gatlinburg was the only part of our country they would see, well then I just got really bummed out.

While the rest of Appalachia is fighting to correct a hundred-plus years of hillbilly stereotypes, Gatlinburg is wallowing in them. Figurines of toothless, barefoot, long-john-clad geezers emerging from tiny plastic outhouses declaring, “Ma, could you hand me ‘nuther copy of the Sears & Roebuck catty-log?” are available for tourists to take back to Germany with them. That way they can put them on their shelves next to their Hummel figurines and remember Appalachian people whenever they want to.