The old Wonderland Hotel in the Smokies of Tennessee. Take a free tour!

On a hill overlooking the Elkmont Campground in the Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee there is an abandoned hotel which must have been a beautiful vacation spot in its time. Somehow that era ended to soon.

Built in 1911 it was owned by club members. When the national park was formed people continued to own by lease from the government. When those leases expired the hotel closed in 1992. Parts burned in 1995 and collapsed in 2005. Now you can see how nature is taking over the once beautiful vacation spot.
Be careful when you travel to this place since those buildings could collapse and are in extreme disrepair due to decades of neglect and fire.

This really shows you how time passes by. Just a quarter century ago this place was in operation and look what time did to this place! It seems to me like those 25 years passed by like nothing but they sure changed this place.

The more I spent time at the Wonderland Hotel the more I felt like I want to travel this place like those travelers did many years ago.

It seems like it was a peaceful, old-fashioned, quiet vacation spot. Family style cooking, big porches, fresh fish caught in the river below. It's the America we have come to love and miss. Nothing like today's over-commercialized stuff.

Take Hwy 73 from Towsend or when you come from Gatlinburg turn right at the Sugarland Visitor Center and go to the Elkmont Campground exit. Look left on top of the hill and you see the remaining structures of the Wonderland Hotel lurk through the trees as you drive to the campground. You'll pass by the steps that I took to walk on top of the hill.