The last 8 years have made me very cynical, but I can’t help but wonder what mining claim has been discovered there. What is more important/ valuable than the resort town and the homes and lives that are there? Living in the Western states, we have seen people, ranch families, businesses, get burned out, flooded out, and poisoned out just so the National Forest or National Monument agencies could claim more land. Gatlinburg butts right up next to the National Forest. Who wants the that land? Or am I just being totally paranoid?
Well - I have no idea how these fires began. I guess any theory is as good as the next one.
You're not being paranoid. The longer I live, the more amazed I become to see just how rotten human beings can be. Rotten in so many ways too.
As stated in some other comments to your comments, it's conceivable that the government was involved in these fires, but if you lived in Tennessee this year you would be very very hard pressed to get someone to believe that. It has been so dry in east and central Tennessee that you could easily start a fire just by flicking a cigarette butt into the grass, whether the wind was blowing or not. It's just damn dry in the eastern part of Tennessee, I've heard a lot of farmers aren't even plowing or even doing anything in their fields to keep from creating a spark with their plows or disks running over a rock or something like that. I've seen pricky pear cactus dryed up/dead. It's really dry, I've lived in Tennessee for over 20 years and never seen it so dry.
Gatlinburg mines tourists and it is pretty lucrative although many of the tourist type stores come and go due to competition. The property owners will rebuild. Real estate is very limited there due to being surrounded by the National Park.
Fond memories and prayers to those affected by this.
You’re not being paranoid, I’m a native North Carolinian and have wondered the same thing. Radical environmentalists can be drawn to the Park Service. Burning down the “tacky tourist trap” to save the wilderness sounds just like something they’d do.
I don’t see any government conspiracy to expand the national park here. If the park wanted to expand, there’s 100’s of thousands of acres of national forest and lightly developed private land adjacent to the west of the park in NC that would be billions cheaper and less legal hassle to obtain.