8/9/2019 How Did Cherokee Indian Hunting Grounds Turn into Family-Friendly Resort Town.

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How Did Cherokee Indian Hunting Grounds Turn into Family-Friendly Resort Town.

Pigeon Forge, located in the eastern portion of Tennessee, is known for its traditional Appalachian crafts, music and folklore. Visitors flock to Pigeon Forge each year to enjoy popular tourist attractions, like Dollywood, unsurpassed shopping and some of the best chalets, vacation condos, and cabins in Smoky Mountains.

But long before it was a popular tourist destination, the Pigeon Forge area wasactually a Cherokee Indian hunting ground. So how did it eventually become a family-friendly resort community? Heres a bit of local trivia to add some historical perspective to your next visit.

Native American roots. Todays US-441 closely follows an ancient Cherokee footpath called as the Indian Gap Trail, which crossed the Smokey Mountains from NorthCarolina through the Pigeon Forge valley, eventually connecting with the Great

Indian Warpath near what is today known as Sevierville, Tennessee. The Warpath,also known as the Great Indian War and Trading Path, was that part of a networkof trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans. Muchof what is now Sevier County was ceded to the United States by the Cherokee in 1

785 with the signing the Treaty of Dumplin.

Settling in. Early Euro-American settlers followed the Indian Gap Trail to the Pigeon Forge area in the early 18th century. Among these pioneers was Colonel Samuel Wear who became the areas the first permanent settler. Wear built a small fort near what is now Pigeon Forge City Park to provide a safe stopover for the early pioneers. Unfortunately for Wear, his fort straddled the Indian Gap Trail and ultimately served as a catalyst for tensions, and battles, between the frontiersmen and the Cherokees. Wears grave is marked today by a monument in Pigeon Forge City Park.A state of mind. In the late 1700s the Pigeon Forge area was part of what istoday known as the lost State of Franklin an autonomous United States territory that later became part of Tennessee. Created near the end of the American Revo

lution, Franklin never officially joined the Union and only existed for four years.

The name game. In the days of the early settlers, flocks of now-extinct passenger pigeons would gather on the banks of the areas river, which was therefore dubbed The Little Pigeon River. In the early 1800s, Issac Love would build a iron forge along that same river and a small community soon grew nearby. The town wasnamed Pigeon Forge in tribute to Loves ironworks complex and the rich diversityof frontier wildlife that once lived along the river.

The birth of tourism. Tourists began visiting Pigeon Forge in the 1870s with theopening of a health resort at Henderson Springs. It was common at that time for

urban dwellers to seek out mountain springs thought to have health-restoring qualities. The opening of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 heraldeda new era of tourism for the region, although no tourism-oriented businesses we

re established in the Pigeon Forge area until the latter half of the 20th Century. Rebel Railroad, which offered Civil War reenactments and train rides, openedin 1961 shortly after the town officially incorporated. The attraction was laterrenamed Goldrush Junction and a log flume amusement ride was added. In 1976, th

e it was again rebranded as Silver Dollar City and continued to grow in popularity, eventually becoming Dollywood in the mid-1980s when entertainer Dolly Partonbecame a partner in the venture.

A shoppers paradise. In the early 1980s, the town launched an aggressive economic plan to develop theme parks, music venues, and outlet malls in order to incre

ase tourism. By 1987, four outlet malls had launched in Pigeon Forge and by theearly 1990s, such malls accounted for 44% of the towns gross revenue. Today, shoppers from across the nation visit the towns more than 200 factory outlets and

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specialty stores.