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“How it stacks up with Gatlinburg Tennessee?”

Gatlinburg is tiny, area-wise, and cannot grow because it is entirely surrounded by steep terrain on three sides, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park on the fourth. It has always been, and still is, strictly a little tourist town. Hardly anyone actually lives in Gatlinburg proper. People who retire to the area or buy vacation cabins are left with having to buy homes in the area (Wears Valley, Townsend area, etc.).

The Gatlinburg area hasn’t been infiltrated by lefties and kooks and old hippies like Asheville has. Sevier County is still solidly red, with almost 80% of the vote going to Trump in 2020, whereas Asheville/Buncombe County has turned blue.

Also, Asheville was always a town where people actually lived and worked and had more going on than just the tourism industry. (Again, Gatlinburg has nothing but tourism.)

There is considerable traffic when tourists arrive in droves to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area during peak summer season and “leaf season” in the fall, but it’s fairly dead in winter (although some locals from Knoxville do go up there in December for the Christmas lights and shopping).

Pigeon Forge has always been known as a tourist trap with mini-golf, then water parks, now Dollywood and outlet malls and more. There are plenty of tourists who go there and stay there, spending the whole time in the malls and various attractions, never setting foot in the Park. It’s known for attracting more “redneck” type tourists — some stopping by there on their way to or from “The Redneck Riviera” (Destin area).

Anyone deciding to buy a retirement home or vacation cabin in the area should really do their homework if it’s a new development. Over the years, there have been some awful scams, with developers promising roads, water and electricity connections, etc., that never came to pass. The buyers were stuck with steep plots way out in the sticks with no way to get there, or any water or electricity. Better to go with a house already built, or at least a lot already on a road with utility connections.

A bunch of retirement and vacation homes burnt to the ground during the terrible wildfires of 2016 when we had a severe dry spell, but that is a rare thing. The Smokes just barely miss qualifying for rainforest status, and get their name from the humidity haze that often hangs over them.

Believe it not, there has been a mafia presence in and around Gatlinburg (old school Italian mafia) since about the 1970s. Sevier County was dry as a bone back then (the only place you could buy a drink was up at the Ski Lodge after paying a dollar to become a card-carrying private club member — legal loophole), and they were wanting to horn in on Archie the Bootpegger’s highly profitable business. They branched out into running some scams (see above) and can be vicious within the “family” but as long as you don’t get mixed up with them, you’d hardly notice they are around.

Sevier County is still technically dry, but now you can buy alcohol in more and more places owing to weird local ordinances (but never “of a Sunday” — anything “bad” you can do is considered a thousand times bad if you do it “of a Sunday”, as in “they was playing cards, and of a Sunday, too!”):

https://www.thesmokies.com/is-gatlinburg-dry/

Back in the day, it was fun to follow the antics of Sheriff Townsend vs Archie the Bootlegger in the Sevier County Times. The Sheriff was always on Archie’s tail, tracking him down, occasionally made him a guest of the county, but of course never shut him down. Everyone figured Townsend was in Archie’s pocket and it was all just entertaining local theater. And Archie provided great service, according to local gossip. You could get your choice of hooch delivered to your door anytime of the day or night.

Lately, there have been more and more retirees flocking in, not to the Smokies, but to the lakes around here. The lake retirement communities are in what are still rural conservative areas and it’s easy driving distance to the Smokies. Lots and homes more affordable, too. Personally, I don’t care for TVA fake lakes, but lots of people love the lake life around here.