Elkmont and Wonderland Hotel Video Featured in Smithsonian Magazine

Thanks to Matt Blitz with Smithsonian Magazine for contacting me and writing the article The Abandoned Settlements Inside National Parks.

In the summer of 2009, urban explorer Jordan Liles was walking the back roads of Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park when he found an intriguing remnant of the past. About a mile off a main road and up an overgrown staircase lay the ruins of the abandoned Wonderland Club Hotel and a few accompanying cabins. Built in 1912, the hotel originally served as a vacation spot for wealthy Tennessee families, and over the next eight decades it provided a refuge away from busy city life. In the 1990s, the Wonderland Club Hotel closed and fell into ruin, gradually fading into the forest surrounding it. Twenty years later, Liles rediscovered the place for himself. “I first saw the large white annex building through trees from the road to Elkmont,” Liles told Smithsonian.com. “I parked nearby and walked up the old stone steps. I felt like I was entering a very special place.”

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