Timber to Tourism

Timber to Tourism. . The road you traveled today to the reach The Sinks follows an abandoned railroad bed. In the early 1900s, large mechanized logging companies used trains to move timber from the forests to saw mills., The Little River Lumber Company laid tracks from Townsend to Elkmont in 1908. Within a year of completing the railroad, the company began offering tourist excursions to the area. The same trains that carried timber out of the mountains now brought in people attracted by the Smokies’ scenic beauty., Logging at Elkmont ceased in 1925. The train tracks were pulled up and replaced by a gravel road. Tourism boomed as automobiles now clattered along the old mountain route of the steam engines., Altering The River Gorge , The swirling waters of the Little River cascade over a man-made waterfall at The Sinks. Before trains rumbled through the Smokies, loggers used the river to float timber to mills. During a flood in the late 1800s, a massive log jam formed here in a bend of the river., Loggers used dynamite to free the logs. The explosion blasted a deep hole in the rocky streambed, creating The Sinks and altering the river course., Captions , (Photo #1) Passengers on their way to the resorts at Elkmont pose for souvenir photos. , (Photo #2) Little River Lumber Company chiseled trough the Little River gorge with steam shovels to make way for their logging trains. , (Photo #3) A log jam in a mountain stream, circa 1935.