Located in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, just a few minutes outside of Gatlinburg, is the small area known as the Elkmont Ghost Town, or formerly known as Daisy Town. Daisy Town is a small part of what used to be a bustling, beautiful resort area. It was where the rich people came to vacation. The cabins were built in the early 1900s, and was actually the tourist destination before even Gatlinburg was. Gatlinburg did not start becoming the tourist destination that it is until the Great Smoky Mountains National Park opened in 1940. However, in 1992, the National Park was able to take the land for use in the park. The NP decided that it would tear down the structures, but before that could happen, many of them were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. With the NP not being able to demolish them, they decided to let them deteriorate on their own, until they could find another solution. But as of 2024, due to so many people visiting them and the history they hold, the NP actually restored 18 of the remaining structures. The 18 remaining structures are the only ones out of 70 that survived. Others have succumbed to fires, and then the 2016 fire, and some from just natural deterioration. What is left is formerly Daisy Town.
This was our first time ever visiting, and it was one of our favorite parts of the trip. We would love to go back and explore it again. All of the cabins, minutes the Appalachian Club at the bottom of the hill, are open to tour. You can tour at your own leisure. We had so much fun going in and out of these cabins and seeing what they would have looked like. The layout and floor plan to many of them was just straight up wonky and made no sense. We asked ourselves multiple times 'what in the world would this have been?' and 'this makes no sense at all.' A lot of the floors were very uneven and some of the rooms would be a completely different level than the room next to it. The windows would even be slanted because of how uneven things were. My kids really enjoyed touring the cabins and I was so happy that they loved it. The only thing that we didn't like is that at the time of us going, there were no plaques or information that would tell you any kind of information about what each cabin used to be, what it looked like before, etc.. and it's actually hard to even find any information on each particular cabin and not just the town as a whole. I really wanted to know more about each specific cabin. I don't know if something like that is in the works or not.
