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A Candid Review of Deer Ridge Mountain Resort Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
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Roaring Fork Motor Trail in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee is a treasure for all visitors to the Park. It has rustic cabins, waterfalls, hiking trails, mountain streams and wildlife including black bears. As locals, we drive this at least a dozen times each year...usually with the top down on the convertible to really appreciate the experience.
From Wikipedia:
The Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is a narrow one-way road that is open to vehicular traffic (cars and small pickup trucks only) in Spring, Summer, and Fall. Along with the historic district, the road passes by two overlooks and a forest that is representative of mid-level elevations in the Smokies.
The trail begins just past the Rainbow Falls Trailhead on Cherokee Orchard Road, and slowly ascends Piney Mountain, topping out at an overlook on the mountain's northern slopes (the overlook's elevation is roughly 3,000 feet/914 meters). Just past the overlook, the road passes numerous large chestnut tree blowdowns. These trees, which often grew to 5--6 feet in diameter, were killed off by a blight in the 1930s.
As the road descends Piney Mountain, it passes a parking lot at the Trillium Gap Trailhead. This hiking trail leads past Grotto Falls and Trillium Gap en route to the summit of Mount Le Conte. Trillium Gap — the gap between Brushy Mountain and the main Le Conte massif — was named by Horace Albright, who observed the trillium-filled area in the 1920s.
Past the Trillium Gap Trailhead, the road steadies as it enters the upper reaches of the Roaring Fork hollow. Patches of young tuliptrees mark the former location of the Clabo and Ogle farms. Immediately after the road crosses Roaring Fork, the Jim Bales Place is visible on the right (east). The Grapeyard Ridge Trail, which connects Roaring Fork to Greenbrier, begins just behind the barn. Past the Jim Bales Place are the Ephraim Bales Place and Alfred Reagan Place.
The road continues to descend past the historic district, passing along the way a parking lot that allows for an upclose view of Roaring Fork. A thin waterfall known as "The Place of a Thousand Drips" is the last stop along the motor trail before it re-enters Gatlinburg.
Between 1800 and 1810, the first permanent Euro-American settlers arrived in the White Oak Flats area around what is now Gatlinburg. In the following decades, their descendants spread out into the surrounding coves and valleys. Richard Reagan (1776--1829), the son of one of these pioneers, settled on a large plot of land just south of Gatlinburg along LeConte Creek. Some of Reagan's children settled to the west in the Sugarlands, while some of them moved east to the hollow along Roaring Fork, which was then known as "Spruce Flats." By 1900, three of Reagan's grandsons, Alfred Reagan (1856--1928), Aaron Reagan, and John H. Reagan were still farming along the stream, just above Gatlinburg.
Jim Bales Place, with barn (right), corn crib (left), and the Alex Cole Cabin (center.) The Bales family settled in the upper section of Roaring Fork sometime in the 1830s or earlier. Caleb Bales (1839--1913), apparently a son or nephew of the first Bales to settle on Roaring Fork, owned a farm just south of the Reagan lands. Caleb's sons Jim Bales (1869--1939) and Ephraim Bales (1867--1936) would spend most of their lives on Roaring Fork farming land inherited from their father.
As the Bales and Reagan families lived on adjoining lands, it's no surprise that they intermarried. Caleb Bales married one of Richard Reagan's granddaughters, Elizabeth, in 1861. Ephraim Bales married a great-granddaughter of Richard Reagan, Minerva, in 1889. Caleb's daughter, Martha, married Alfred Reagan in 1879.
Uppermost on Roaring Fork, near where the stream absorbs Surry Creek, were farms owned by the Clabo family, Gilbert Ogle, and Jasper Mellinger. Former homesteads can usually be identified by the preponderance of young tuliptrees (rather than the more common hemlock or oak), as tuliptrees are the quickest to reclaim previously-cultivated land.
Around 1850, the residents of Roaring Fork constructed a crude road connecting the area to White Oak Flats (this old road is now a stop along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail). By 1900, the community had matured into a mountain hamlet with its own school, church, general store, and tub mills.
In 1976, the Roaring Fork Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail Greenbrier Swimming Holeby kesjam2,683 views
Catch the red car! Catch the red car! :)
ucheucheuche 5 months ago
I drove a portion this road for the first time . . . in the dark! (up to Grotto Falls trailhead) There were definitely a few, "where the heck did the road go?" moments! A very fun drive, perhaps even better than Tail of the Dragon.
rreidnauer 7 months ago