Fun Mountain Amusement Park Urban Exploration in Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Over the last eight months, I've carefully been planning, researching and editing a new project in my spare time. I shot this new short film during the same week I was shooting Tennessee Wonderland. Today, I present Tennessee Mountain View: Exploring an Abandoned Theme Park in Gatlinburg. While my original goal for this short film was to simply explore an abandoned structure, it ended up being so much more. I know you value your time, so as with my previous two films, I placed a lot of importance on including an ending worth the time it takes to watch the video in full. Please visit the contact page and let me know if you'd like to receive a DVD copy.
Also, part of this project is the presentation of still photographs, some of which can be seen in the short film. The entire photo album is now available, including some from photographer Brandy Amos.
I owe thanks to a lot of people, all mentioned in the end credits. Two key contributors are music composers Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) and Bing Satellites (bingsatellites.com) for providing the soundtrack. Photographer Brandy Amos helped with allowing the use of several photos from the past. And I also thank Bradley Reeves for being gracious enough to provide usage rights for archive video from the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound.
And here is a collection of articles, videos, images and other various links relevant to this project:
"Picturing the Smokies" DVD purchase page: http://shop.smokiesinformation.org
Clips from "Picturing the Smokies DVD: http://vimeo.com/81405818
Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound: https://www.facebook.com/tamisarchive
Vintage films of Gatlinburg: http://youtu.be/o7eOmR3rhmA
Photographer Brandy Amos' Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/people/flyordiedays/
TV station news article about plans for the abandoned land: http://www.wate.com
The original Fun Mountain website: http://funmountain.com
Short history about Jack Huff: http://www.jackhuffs.com
Photos on Tennessee State Library and Archives: http://tnsos.org
Newspaper article about the abandoned land: http://www.knoxnews.com
William Britten's article about Mountain View Hotel: http://williambritten.com
Newspaper article about vintage Gatlinburg video: http://www.knoxnews.com
Thompson Brothers Image Collection: http://dlxs.lib.utk.edu
Collection viewable at the UTK library: http://dlc.lib.utk.edu
Mountain View search results on the UTK library website: http://utk-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com
Tennessee State Library and Archives: http://tnsos.org
Original Fun Mountain page on Archive.org: http://www.reaganresorts.com
Feel free to contribute your thoughts in the comments, and I hope all of you enjoyed the short film.
Update (March 8, 2014): Thank you very much to both Yahoo and Knoxville News Sentinel for running stories on my film. One of my photos and a link to the story even made it in top center placement on the Yahoo homepage for several hours. I don't think you could buy that space if you wanted to, so I'm very grateful for their kindness.
Update 2 (April 14, 2014): Someone made it to the top of the mountain. See here for the story and photos.