Fernweh, An Ache for Distant Places

The Great Smoky Mountains Byway is just one of thirteen famous byways in Tennessee, including Natchez Trace Parkway, Newfound Gap Road, Great River Road, National Scenic Byways: Cherohala Skyway, East Tennessee Crossing, Woodlands Trace, Norris Freeway, Sequatchie Valley Scenic Byway, Tennessee River Trail Scenic Byway, Walton Road Scenic Byway, and Ocoee Scenic Byway.

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS BYWAY
The Great Smoky Mountains Byway is just one of those byways; a 150-mile driving route along Highway 321 that connects Lenoir City (where it intersects with US 11) to Maryville, Walland, Townsend, Wears Valley, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, slightly into Gatlinburg, Cosby, Newport, Greeneville, Jonesborough, Johnson City, and Elizabethton.

The purpose of the trail is to highlight the history and landscape of Tennessee, especially the East Tennessee region near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

East Tennessee is the land of Overhill Cherokee history, Dolly Parton, country and bluegrass music, moonshine distilling, Appalachian culture, Revolutionary War and Civil War battles, the Lost State of Franklin, the Emancipation Movement, where legends Daniel Boone and David “Davy” Crockett trekked in their famous expeditions, and so much more.

Make a mental note: Hwy 321 runs south of the main interstates, I-40 and I-81.

If you are following GPS, it will constantly reroute you to go north and get back on one of those interstates instead of staying on Hwy 321, which is also called Hwy 32, Cosby Highway, and a few other names along the way.

Watch for 321 signs and stay on track. Here is a GPS route I made myself and a screenshot of the mapped route. 

LOUDON COUNTY
Loudon County is the home of Lenoir City, the western end of the driving route. Loudon County is comprised of Loudon (City), Lenoir City, Tellico, Philadelphia, Greenback, Dixie Lee Junction, parts of Farragut, and Unitia.

Settlers began arriving as early as 1790 in what is now Loudon. Back then the area was still part of North Carolina, and it was not until 1796 that Tennessee became the 16th US State.

Loudon has less than ten square miles and is appropriately known as the “Lakeway to the Smokies” because it is surrounded by the Tennessee River, Clinch River, Tellico Lake, Watts Bar Lake, Melton Hill Lake, and other bodies of water.

The Overlook at Fort Loudon Dam is just beyond the TVA access roads, before Fort Loudon Marina. You can walk the trails, use the picnic shelters, or just enjoy the open grassy hills. Click here to read more about Loudon County.

BLOUNT COUNTY
Blount County is home to the cities of Maryville and Townsend, and is an access point for other scenic drives like the Foothills Parkway. 

If you take the Foothills Parkway westward away from Townsend, it leads to a large concentration of Tennessee Overhill Cherokee sites like Vonore, Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, Fort Loudon, the Tellico Blockhouse, and the Chota / Tanasi Memorial.

From there you can access the Cherohala Skyway, the Unicoi Turnpike Trail and the Ocoee Scenic Byway through additional Cherokee lands and the Cherokee National Forest. 

If you decide to drive the Cherohala Skyway, be sure to stop by the Charles Hall Museum in Tellico Plains first. 

Much of Blount County’s economy and culture is centered around Maryville College, the McGhee Tyson Airport, and the large Air National Guard base.

MARYVILLE is a small city located south of Knoxville, first settled by white folk in 1875 during the construction of Fort Craig, and officially founded as the City of Maryville a decade later.

Maryville has a rich history in anti-slavery movements. The Society of Friends presence was strong there in the 19th century, and one of their core values is opposition to slavery.

Click here to read more about Maryville and be sure to visit Southland Books & Café, the Blount County War Dead Memorial at the courthouse, and the Blount County Historical Museum while you are in town. 

TOWNSEND is a mountain town roughly halfway between Maryville and Gatlinburg. Townsend got its start in the 1920s as a hub for the railroad and lumber industries.

It is called the “Peaceful Side of the Smokies” and is just a mile or so from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The other two entrances are located in Gatlinburg, TN and Cherokee, NC. 

This land first belonged to many Native American tribes, as far back as 2,000 BC and the Woodland Period. The Cherokee settled into the Tuckaleechee Cove at the start of the 1600s and built villages along the Little River.

Be sure to stop at the Snoring Bear Diner in the Walland Community, and the Little River Railroad Museum for insight into the region’s rail and lumber industries. 

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK
The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited national park in the country, and one of the only few you can enter for free.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a designated International Biosphere Reserve since the 1970s, and has been part of the greater Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve since the late 1980s.

The Appalachian Trail, Kuwohi (fka Clingman’s Dome), Mount LeConte, and Cades Cove are some of its most famous features. Mountain peaks within the park reach nearly 7,000 at their highest points, and there are more than a dozen peaks that reach over 5,000 feet. 

Entering the GSMNP from Townsend will bring you in near Cades Cove, the park’s most visited and family-oriented part. Cades Cove is also considered the twin park to Cataloochee Valley, just across the TN/NC State border in the North Carolina side of the Great Smokies. 

SEVIER COUNTY
Sevier County is home to Sevierville, birthplace of Dolly Parton, and to both Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, a tourist district often called the “Myrtle Beach of the Mountains.” 

SEVIERVILLE was named after John Sevier, one of the founding fathers of the State of Tennessee. It is pronounced Se-VEER-ville, not SEVYER-ville. You can even get by saying Suh-VEER-vull if you are a native. Lookin’ at you, GPS.

Be sure to visit the Dolly Parton statue outside the Sevier County Courthouse, or brave the crowds at Dollywood if you have the time. 

PIGEON FORGE is an intentionally major tourist trap town with buildings that are designed to look like they are upside down or toppling over, on fire, or have Godzilla hanging off the side of a skyscraper, or some sort of monster leering out at you from the roof.

Everything is meant to look to like it is coming for you. I can’t handle it.

GATLINBURG is a little more chill with all of the luxury cabins overlooking the Great Smokies, but you usually have to go through so much traffic and Pigeon Forge madness just to get there. Just stick to Highway 321 instead of the main drag through Pigeon Forge, and you will avoid most of that. 

If you do decide to stay for a while, the Village Shops are one of my favourite parts of Gatlinburg, mostly for sentimental reasons.

This little complex has been there since the beginning of Gatlinburg’s days, and since I first started going as a kid. It is set up to look like an old Bavarian village and that may be my favourite thing about it overall.

You can read more about Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and the Blue Ridge Parkway scenic driving route here. 

WEARS VALLEY is a small community in Sevier County, right on the edge of Townsend. It feels remote, even though tourism and cabin rentals are what keeps this area thriving. 

Be sure to visit The Sinks roadside waterfall, or park in the lot and hike the Meigs Creek Trail.

BEARS!
Listen, there is a high probability you will run into a black bear here. They are cute AF but they can and/or will kill you.

And if you have a heart-warming little experience with one and leave unscathed, just know that this only trains bears to feel more comfortable approaching humans, and officials have already had to put down enough black bears over the years.

Be responsible. Be safe. Don’t ruin it for everyone.

Learn about what to do when you face a black bear by clicking here and here and here. 

COCKE COUNTY
Cocke County is home to the cities of Newport and Cosby. A short stretch of the byway here can be a little more like a dusty old ghost town than the beautiful naturescapes of the Smokies, but stick with it. Keep in mind that it was hit hard by Hurricane Helene recently.

Once you get into Newport and move into Cosby, you will see lots of rich green farmland with rolling hills.

NEWPORT was first settled in the 1780s, and it was first called New Port because it was literally a new port along the French Broad River to support new settlements. Newport as we know it now is a fairly well-preserved 1920’s-era town with dozens of attractive buildings.

I plan to spend more time in Newport at some point but I have never quite felt safe there unless it was broad daylight, mostly because of a flood of stories about physical attacks and violence from people I know. and it also just has a…vibe.

It has its lovely parts and it has some very rough parts too, more than any other town along this route. 

Please send me your recommendations because I pass through Newport pretty often and there is not a lot of in-depth info online about its history. 

My favourite place in Newport is Grill 73, a Russian-American restaurant that serves Russian specialties like pirozhki, stuffed cabbage rolls, scalloped potato casserole, and Valentina’s famous borsch. 

That’s borsch, not “borscht.” Russians and most Slavic people do not actually spell it with a “t” or pronounce it at the end.

The owners are a sweet and hilarious older couple that settled in Newport, of all places, after decades of touring in a prominent Russian circus as acrobats, trapeze artists, side acts, and eventually managing the show. 

They are not the first foreigners to make Newport their home, by any means. The nearby community of Parrottsville is one of the oldest communities in Tennessee. It was settled by Germans in the 1780s and their descendants still live in and around Cocke County. 

The Cocke County Distillery is certainly a popular attraction for locals and tourists. 

COSBY
We loved the drive through Cosby, especially after we found Carver’s Orchard and Apple House.

 

When you enter the old farm gate and make your way up the hill, the view of mountains and hills against the skyline is gorgeous.

The apple and grape orchards will have you gaping in awe and taking selfies.

We wandered around, soaked in the fall weather and cool breeze, picked a few apples, browsed their candy shop, then made our way into the marketplace. 

Inside the market, there are tons of hand-painted signs that teach you all about different types of apples, when they are in season, the different flavours, and best uses for each one. 

The machinery they use to process the grapes and apples they pick each day are in the shop also, and you might have the chance to get in on the actions there as well. 

At the Apple House next door, we tried some of their apple fritters and apple butter as an appetizer.

I am not a fan of the hush puppy style of fritters, but the apple butter could quickly become habit forming. It does not have as heavy of a molasses taste or texture as most apple butters, and I LOVE it for that. 

We had a bowl of pinto beans with cornbread, a big slice of onion, and baked cinnamon apples for lunch.

We later took a wrong turn back toward Gatlinburg along Hwy 321 and got stopped at a road block, but it was worth it because we got to see workers fell a giant tree. 

GREENE COUNTY
Greene County is home to the city of Greeneville which has the distinction of being the only “Greenville” in the USA spelled with an “e.” Greeneville was founded in 1783 and is Tennessee’s second oldest town after Jonesborough.

It includes the community of Limestone where famous frontiersman Davy Crockett was born. The David Crockett Birthplace State Park is just minutes from downtown Greeneville. 

Greeneville and Greene County have an unbelievable amount of multi-war history and a historical ability to hold space for more than one “side” during these wars.

There are several sites in Greene County on the national Civil War Trail route including the Battle of Blue Springs (a town now called Mosheim), the site of General John Hunt Morgan’s murder, the Dickson-Williams Mansion, Tusculum College, the Longstreet Winter Headquarters, and more detailed on this map. 

Start your visit with a trip to the Greeneville Greene County History Museum for more in-depth history and to see a collection of relics, crafts, automobiles, and antiques recovered from the town’s early days.

Greeneville is also obsessed with former president Andrew Johnson, as this is his birthplace.

Johnson was known for his bold efforts to reunite southern states that had seceded while holding office in the government center of that very secession. He was also known for his hard stance against the citizenship and rights of enslaved African Americans.

Johnson notoriously proposed and passed legislation against what little autonomy the few Freedmen had carved out for themselves back then, and he worked diligently to undo any civil progress anyone had made or tried to make anywhere else. He even convinced his cousin Abe Lincoln to exempt the state of Tennessee from his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 so that he and his fellow Tennessee slave owners would not have to release theirs. 

What an absolute bastard. 

You can read more about Greeneville here in this blog.

WASHINGTON COUNTY
Washington County is home to Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

It was founded in 1779, nearly two decades before it officially became a state. Jonesborough, once spelled as Jonesboro, is part of the Tri-Cities region of East Tennessee that includes Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol.

JONESBOROUGH was named after Willie Jones, a politician from North Carolina who was known for his support of exploring and expanding westward in the 1770s when very few people had even been.

It serves as the seat of Washington County and was the first official county of any state west of the Appalachians.

Downtown has dozens of interesting historic sites and architecture with a mix of Greek Revival, Federalist, Victorian, and other styles.

Because of this, Main Street and its surrounding blocks look a little more like New England than the average Tennessee or North Carolina mountain town.

When the first white settlers in this part of Tennessee formed a system of government called the Watauga Association, they soon wrote their own Constitution, the first of its kind in North America.

Later on in 1784, Jonesborough served as the capitol of the State of Franklin for its first year and the most prominent officials, politicians, and other high profile guests that came to Jonesborough stayed at the Chester Inn.

Jonesborough prides itself on having been the center for the Abolitionist movement and stronghold of Unionist sentiment among Confederate states during the Civil War.

In fact, in 1819-1820 a local Quaker man named Elihu Embree printed his Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator at Jacob Howard’s print shop, which we now know as the May-Dishner home below. The Emancipator was the first ever publication strictly dedicated to the abolition of slavery.

Jonesborough hosts the National Storytelling Festival each fall, the original location of Tennessee Hills Distilling, and to the Heritage Alliance of Northeast Tennessee & Southwest Virginia, an incredible resource for all things past and present of the region.

The website is filled with fascinating archives, photographs, and other recordings as well as Historic Preservation, Racial/Social Justice Resource Sheets, and other outreaches.

It is an excellent resource for identifying and learning about many of the homes and abandoned buildings I found around town.

Jonesborough also happens to be my favourite city in the Great Smoky Mountains Byway. You can read more about Jonesborough here. 

CARTER COUNTY
Carter County is located completely within the Blue Ridge Mountains, and it is home to Johnson City and Elizabethton. 

JOHNSON CITY is one part of the Tri-Cities area along with Kingsport and Bristol, which has a collective population of nearly 520,000. Johnson City alone has around 75,000 residents.

It is a college town, centered largely around East Tennessee State University. It is also known as a “Med Tech Corridor” backed by ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine and Gatton College of Pharmacy, the Johnson City Medical Center, Niswonger Children’s Hospital, and Franklin Woods Community Hospital.

In 1856, a local named Henry Johnson founded Johnson’s Depot and it served as the major railroad station for the Southeastern US. Norfolk Southern, Southern Railway, and the narrow gauge Eastern Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad, aka the “Tweetsie,” all crossed lines there.

Johnson City is a major hub for country, bluegrass, gospel, folk and more old-time music, as fans may have heard of Columbia Records’ famous 1928 Johnson City Sessions.

Bristol, its Tri-County neighbour, is the “Birthplace of Country Music” and hosts the Birthplace of Country Museum which you can read more about here.

Be sure to visit the Gray Fossil Site & Museum, Reese Museum, and Bays Mountain Park & Planetarium while you are in town. Grab a drink and learn about Johnson City’s gangster connections at Capone’s if you are there in the evening.

ELIZABETHTON was founded in 1799 and holds the title of many firsts.

It was the site of the first independent settlement of white folk west of the thirteen original colonies, and west of the Eastern Continental Divide.

The settlement was called the Watauga Association and was created in 1772, more than 25 years before what we know now as Elizabethton. Like most land in this region, it was ruled by the Cherokee and Muscogee long before that. 

Elizabethton’s Carter Mansion is the oldest building still standing in the entire state, and one of the first constitutional governments written somewhere west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Both the mansion and the documents are located at Sycamore Shoals State Park.

The Elizabethton Covered Bridge was built in 1882 and spans 134-feet across the Doe River. 

It is just about a block removed from Elk Street, the downtown main drag. A serene park surrounds the Doe Rover on either side, looking over historic Elizabethton. 

Elizabethton’s Veteran’s Walk Way is a brick-paved trail that connects a circular garden of memorials, crosses Elk Street, and continues with a double-sided wall of plaques that are engraved with the names of each person who served. 

Take a stroll down Elk Street to see its many shops, galleries, murals, and 1800s-early 1900s architecture. 

Keep watch for square signs like this posted at chest/eye level around town. These are stops on the Elizabethton Walking Tour and mark significant historical sites. 

One site I really love is this brick alley right off Elk Street that is lined with mosaics of some of those historically significant sites I mentioned. 

Above is the Covered Bridge, and below is an ode to the railroad industry. 

Stop at every little roadside flea market, historical plaque, country diner, apple orchard, and beautiful overlook that you encounter on the Great Smoky Mountains Byway!

In the area for a while? Don’t forget to visit Bristol, Johnson City, Jonesborough, Roan Mountain State Park and the Rhododendron Gardens while you are Carter County.

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