Photo by Alan Solomon, Chicago Tribune
More than ten million people pass through the tourist town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, each year on their way to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So I was troubled to get an e-mail from a friend who visited Gatlinburg last July, reporting that daily temperatures over 100 degrees had dried the drought-stricken forests to tinder.
The third week of November, more than a dozen fires flared up around town. By the time the conflagration was over, hundreds of homes and businesses had been reduced to ashes, including the mayor’s home. Fourteen people died.
Gatlinburg is not only the gateway to the Southern mountains; for many Americans, it is the Southern mountains. (Locals would smile at that because the town’s glittering gift shops are a caricature of Southern culture.) Certainly, Gatlinburg maintains an important connection between the rest of our country and the mountains.
So I’m glad to say that Gatlinburg is coming back. Shop owners and innkeepers are working overtime to extend a warm Southern welcome when summer tourist season gets in full swing. Their determination expresses the true spirit of Southern mountain people, no matter what anyone says about the glitz of that town. God bless ’em.
Southern Mountains 