Insiders\' Guide to the Great Smoky Mountains, 4th (Insiders\' Guide Series) “As the Gateway to the Smokies, we have the responsibility to make ourselves more aesthetically pleasing,” said David Perella, Gatlinburg’s director of tourism. And as the director of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, Terry Maddox, said, “It’s why Gatlinburg exists.” That’s why the city is focusing more on its own history and culture than it is on bringing in tacky tourist traps. “Over the years, we haven’t done a very good job of (focusing on) the culture and heritage of the Smokies,” Perella said. “So we’re moving in that direction.” And in 2007, the city will have a perfect opportunity to do that when it celebrates its bicentennial of the town’s European settlement.

Gatlinburg’s first century was highlighted by a Civil War battle, in which Cherokee Indians fought alongside the Confederate Army, and birthplace of John Reagan, who served as postmaster general of the Confederacy. But in the early 1920s, Knoxville photographer James Thompson’s pictures of the Smokies started drawing tourists to Gatlinburg. Ruth Miller knows all about those early years and what turned Gatlinburg into a destination spot in Eastern Tennessee. Her grandmother owned land in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park before 1934 when it was established by Congress. “There were 1,200 farms that had to be bought to make this a national park,” Miller said. “I asked my grandmother one time if she wanted to sell the land, and she said, ?We didn’t want to sell – we had to.? “But I could tell as an old woman, she was glad it was a park. We never had any money, but our mountain people loved their land.”

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