Editing Gatlinburg, Tennessee (section)

===National park===
[[File:The Gatlinburg Trail Running Into the Town.JPG|thumb|right|Gatlinburg Trail entering Gatlinburg from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park]]

Extensive logging in the early 1900s led to increased calls by conservationists for federal action, and in 1911, Congress passed the [[Weeks Act]] to allow for the purchase of land for national forests. Authors such as Horace Kephart and Knoxville-area businesses began advocating for the creation of a [[national park]] in the Smokies that would be similar to [[Yellowstone]] or [[Yosemite]] in the Western United States. With the purchase of {{convert|76,000|acre|km2}} in the Little River Lumber Company tract in 1926, the movement quickly became a reality.<ref name="Frome, 166-191">Frome, 166–191.</ref>

Andrew Huff spearheaded the movement in the Gatlinburg area, and he opened the first hotel in Gatlinburg – the Mountain View Hotel – in 1916.<ref>Daniel Pierce, ''The Great Smokies: From Natural Habitat to National Park'' (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 33.</ref> His son, Jack, established LeConte Lodge atop [[Mount Le Conte (Tennessee)|Mount Le Conte]] in 1926.<ref>Brewer, 110.</ref> In spite of resistance from lumberers at [[Elkmont, Tennessee|Elkmont]] and difficulties with the Tennessee legislature,<ref name="Frome, 166-191"/> Great Smoky Mountains National Park opened in 1934.

The park radically changed Gatlinburg. When the Pi Beta Phis arrived in 1912, Gatlinburg was a small hamlet with six houses, a blacksmith shop, a general store, a Baptist church, and a greater community of 600 individuals, most of whom lived in log cabins.<ref>Jackson, 11.</ref> In 1934, the first year the park was open, an estimated 40,000 visitors passed through the city. Within a year, this number had increased over twelvefold to 500,000.<ref name="Abramson, 644"/> From 1940 to 1950, the cost per acre of land in Gatlinburg increased from $50 ({{Inflation|index=US|value=50|start_year=1940|fmt=eq|r=-3}}) to $8,000 ({{Inflation|index=US|value=8,000|start_year=1950|fmt=eq|r=-3}}).<ref>North Callahan, ''Smoky Mountain Country'' (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1952), 222.</ref>

While the park's arrival benefited Gatlinburg and made many of the town's residents wealthy, the tourism explosion led to problems with [[air quality]] and [[urban sprawl]]. Even in modern times, the town's infrastructure is often pushed to the limit on peak vacation days and must consistently adapt to accommodate the growing number of tourists.<ref name="Abramson, 644"/>