Elkmont In The Great Smoky Mountain National Park

Click on the above video to enlarge it.
Elkmont is located in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. There is also a campground located near there.
Here is good good information about Elkmont,Tennessee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elkmont,_Tennessee
And the link below gives more good information about the Elkmont cabins.
http://home.earthlink.net/~tnhiker/lifeafter50onemansperspective/id43.html
I stayed in one of these cabins in the summer of 1970. A friend of mine who was from Knoxville,Tennessee let me and another fellow stay there over a long weekend. Her family was one of the original owners of one of these cabins.
It was rustic with little to do so my friend suggested we drive in to Gatlinburg. We didn't know but at that time Gatlinburg had a very early curfew. The police stopped us since it was after 10pm. We had just gone in to buy some beer. They checked us out and let us go after telling us that thieves use the highway from Tenn. through the park over to North Carolina with hot cars. By the way here is a little known fact. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the only National Park without an entrance fee. That is because when the park was created Tenn. and North Carolina demanded that the main road that runs through the park remain open and free of any charge and if this was ever changed the area would revert to Tenn. and North Carolina. So there is no entrance fee to enter The Great Smoky National Park. And that is one reason along with the location of the park that it is the most visited of all the National Parks.
We revisited Elkmont in 2004. It was a sad sight to see the cabins have fallen into disrepair. But plans are afoot to restore some of them as you can learn by reading the articles above.
Elkmont is cool in the summer. A welcome relief and retreat from the heat.
There is another story concerning Elkmont. It is where the notorius killer Bradford Bishop left his station wagon and disappeared in 1976 never to be seen again.
Here is a link to information on the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Bishop
Rather than post many pictures one by one of the cabins the way they look now here is a link to a Flickr photo set that has many good photos of the place as it now looks.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/x376/tags/elkmont/
Be sure and click on the pictures to enlarge them.