Home-Grown Crafts Draw Eager Shoppers to Gatlinburg

Anyone who knows even a little bit about America’s home-grown crafts knows that you get some of the best in southeastern Tennessee.

This tradition-rich region that hugs the corner of the state and holds hands with the Great Smoky Mountains is bursting with skilled craftspeople. Their creations keep us in touch with our handmade past and lure us with the promise of the real thing.

I imagined that just about everyone in Gatlinburg (about 3,000 regulars) would be devoted to making handcrafts. I visualized them spinning wool, carving wood, weaving shawls, throwing pots, dipping candles, plaiting baskets. I pictured them sitting in front of their little log cabins at the side of a little paved road, earnestly hunched over their work while old dog Tray sat patiently nearby, wagging in a friendly manner to admiring visitors like me.

I imagined that some of them would be standing over wood stoves stirring homemade soup or standing at well-worn kitchen tables kneading stone-ground wheat-bread dough in one of those cabins where I could get lunch for a buck.

The real Gatlinburg, however, is not the town of my dreams.

The real Gatlinburg is big-city slick and neon bright.

Big Weekend Business

On any given weekend, this hamlet that’s usually just a wide place in the road balloons into a churning mass of 30,000 sharped-eyed shoppers who eagerly elbow their way through its 495 shops, eat at one of its 100 restaurants and roll their eyes at some of its 36 family attractions. Among other things, you’ll find a wax museum, an aerial tramway and a religiously oriented experience called Christus Garden. Those who put their bodies through these rigors can sleep away their sore feet in one of Gatlinburg’s 6,254 hotel (or motel) rooms.

If you enjoy this kind of high-density shopping--”the Hong Kong of the Smokies” comes to mind--this otherwise beautiful little hill town just might be your ticket to vacation paradise. It seems to satisfy the cravings of those who descend on it almost every weekend of the year.

Pre-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas weekends are the most crunch-happy times, according to the chamber of commerce, which runs a bustling information center in the center of town. For more information, write to the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce, 520 Parkway, P.O. Box 527, Gatlinburg, Tenn. 37738, or call (615) 436-4178.

The two best places to see authentic regional crafts are the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and its affiliate, the Arrowcraft Shop.

The school offers a wonderful selection of crafts courses (you have to enroll ahead of time, of course), and the shop sells only those items handmade by local artisans. Both are on the parkway right in the middle of town, but the campus is just behind a string of stores and a wax museum, so watch for the sign marking the entrance.

Fraternal Philanthropy

The Arrowmont school started in 1912 when Pi Beta Phi fraternity, aware of the economic hardship in the area and looking for a worthwhile philanthropy, opened a settlement school to provide educational and health services for families in the picturesque but poor countryside.

From their personal involvement with these families, the Pi Phis encouraged residents to pursue such traditional crafted items of the region as quilts, weavings, baskets, woodcarvings and brooms.

The encouragement worked, and the Arrowcraft Shop--the first, oldest and most beautiful establishment of its kind in town--opened in 1926.

Be sure to visit the shop and the school, where there’s a fine art gallery and bookstore containing a wide selection of books on crafts.

For Arrowmont information and an Arrowcraft catalogue, write to P.O. Box 567, Gatlinburg, Tenn. 37738, or call (615) 436-5860.

But the biggest crafts bonus is outside of town.

Independent Community

The Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community is on Glades Road just off U.S. 321, three miles from the downtown hurly-burly. Keep an eye out for the handcarved wood sign.

There you can visit more than 50 shops and studios along an eight-mile loop that meanders through woods and meadows. Some of the shops are up a side road, some are clustered and some stand alone. Each has its own unpretentious but genuine identity.

This beguiling community, which claims to have the largest group of independent artists and craftsmen in Tennessee, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, which says something for durability.

You can find just about anything your crafts-loving heart desires inside these little shops: dulcimers, rugs, candles, bonnets, baskets, quilts, stained glass, brooms, hand-woven shirts, shawls, table covers and napkins, blankets, hats, spinning wheels and looms, leather, pottery, knives, corn-shuck flowers, furniture, quilts and metal spinning. Often you can watch these items being made. That’s the real fun.

Veteran Metal Spinner

One of the most unusual crafts is practiced by veteran metal spinner Helmut Koechert, who has his studio and shop at the end of a little trail that crawls up the hillside from the main road. Not far away is the cottage that he and his wife have called home since 1969.

Mrs. Koechert, who runs the shop, will tell you that her husband is one of the few remaining metal spinners who works in pewter, which accounts for his popularity. “We’re already busy with our mail orders for the holidays,” she said with considerable pride. She was skillfully personalizing a pewter thimble for a customer who was admiring the morning glories draped across the roof of the sagging front porch. “You should see it in the summer. It’s beautiful here.”

Koechert’s shop contains many examples of his skill: bowls, platters, trays, vases, cups and plates. All are signed, and anything you buy is wrapped in newspaper for a safe trip home.

The friendly mood lingers as you leave, and it drifts into all the other shops you visit along the loop, including an art gallery and two small restaurants.

For a map and brochure, write to Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community, Route 1, Box 366, Gatlinburg, Tenn. 37738.

Ample Accommodations

As for accommodations, every U.S. hotel and motel chain seems to have an outlet in Gatlinburg. The chamber of commerce can provide details. While a student at Arrowmont I stayed in a dorm on campus, but I also spent some time at a quiet, homey inn that’s right next to the crafts community on a tree-lined road of its own.

The Buckhorn Inn is a sturdy, inviting two-story white clapboard structure in a clearing near the top of 30 acres of forest. The main building’s colonnaded back porch overlooks a grassy sward surrounded by thick stands of trees. The mist-shrouded Smokies stand in the distance. This building has seven bedrooms, each with private bath, on the second floor. A large first-floor living-dining room is graced by a grand piano, fireplace, sofas, several maple dining tables covered with napery, and tall windows that face the mountains.

Four cottages peep out through sheltering trees. Mine had a living room with fireplace, tasteful furnishings and a mullioned picture window, a bedroom, bath and screened porch.

A full breakfast was included with the $60 overnight tariff, and guests can make reservations for dinner as well, which is extra. For information, contact the Buckhorn Inn, Tudor Mountain Road, Gatlinburg, Tenn. 37738, (615) 436-4668.

Great Smoky Park

It’s less than a mile from the Greenbrier entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation’s most popular park. According to the National Park Service it attracts at least 9 million visitors a year to its 900 miles of hiking trails, more than 1,000 campsites, 250 miles of roads and 500,000 acres of wooded wilderness. Camping, fishing and hiking are most popular.

And, of course, it’s famous for those gray, smoky mists that veil its hidden peaks. The mountains, of the ancient Appalachian chain, are not as imperious as the Western giants--the highest being 6,643 feet--but their wooded grace makes up for what they lack in grandeur.

One particularly satisfying and memorable day trip from Gatlinburg (about four hours round trip if you don’t dally) is to Cades Cove, where many of the structural remains of an early 1800s settlement are carefully preserved as reminders of the 700 pioneers who called this blissful site home for more than a century.

The cove--five miles of flat grassland guarded on all sides by the mountains--became part of the park in the 1930s. Corn meal sold at a small shop at the settlement is ground at an old mill a few hundred yards away and makes wonderful corn bread. The photo possibilities seem endless, especially with the nearly tame animals that seem unperturbed by people visits.

For more park information, write to Superintendent, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tenn. 37738, or call (615) 436-5615.

What this little corner of Tennessee offers is just about anything a traveler’s heart desires. Even Dollyland is in the neighborhood, at nearby Pigeon Forge.

It’s not a moment too soon to make plans to visit when the leaves change color. There’s nothing like a Tennessee mountain town in the fall.