Trails Near Mountain City, TN

Hi guys! The LOML and I are heading to Mountain City, TN next week for a wedding. We plan on hiking Gentry Creek Falls one day. There is some good information here but I wanted to see if anyone had any first-hand experience with it. Also, are there other trails nearby that we should try?

There are a number of trails in the area. Take your fly rod up Gentry Creek. It's full of ****-an-vinegar rainbows and pretty little brook trout. Laurel Fork Falls in adjacent Carter County are worth working up a sweat. Also in Carter County there's Roan Mountain State Park with The Balds of Roan on top of (wait for it) Roan Mountain, a unique biome with spectacular views. The AT is accessible from numerous points throughout the area and has some very scenic sections. Just over the Virginia line in Damascus, Virginia there's the Virginia Creeper Trail. If you can find a copy of Highland Trails by Kenneth Murray it has a very complete selection of the region's trails with good descriptions and excellent directions. One thing to keep in mind - it's deer season now and a bit of blaze orange on or about your person is a good idea. I ain't even scratched the surface yet. You're going to be in the middle of the North Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee and just across the line from Mount Rodgers National Recreation Area in Virginia.

Thanks for the information! I'm going to research a few of the trails. Will definitely post pictures when I get back. Thanks again!

You're more than welcome. Fall colors should be ripening in a lot of places. By the way Damascus, Virginia is host to an annual celebration, Trail Days, for AT through-hikers and wannabe's. You might like it up here so much that you'll come back for your friend's anniversary celebrations. Oh, and don't worry about alligators or sharks; they're hibernating this time of year.

oldbluelight said:

Oh, and don't worry about alligators or sharks; they're hibernating this time of year.

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We're going to hike Laurel Fork Falls from Dennis Cove. We may head over to one of the Roan Balds if we have time. Been a long time since we've seen foliage; we are looking forward to it.

Quick update to this. We are driving up early tomorrow morning. On Friday we are hiking Laurel Fork Falls from the Hampton Blueline/Laurel Falls Trail, a 5.5 mile hike (round trip). We will then drive over and hike Rock Creek Falls, a 3-4 mile (round trip) hike. Saturday we are going to run on the Virginia Creeper Trail. Sunday we will hike Gentry Creek Falls before heading home. Thanks for all the suggestions, oldbluelight! Really helped us plan our trip.

One quick note for you before you go. There just been a rash of break-ins reported this week at the Hampton Trailhead. Be sure there's no temptation obvious in your parked car. You originally mentioned hiking down to the falls from the Dennis Cove area which has a NFS campground with parking that is somewhat more secure so I didn't mention this. Rock Creek is nice. It happens to be one of the first projects of the Civilian Conservation Corps way back in the '30's. You'll like that area. The nickname for the town of Erwin is "The Valley Beautiful". And yeah, Erwin is famous as the town where they hanged the elephant.

Thanks for the heads up. We had planned on starting at Dennis Cove but wanted a longer hike so decided on starting at the Hampton Trailhead. We'll make sure that nothing is visible.

They hung an elephant in Erwin? Now I have to go look that story up.

Oh yeah, and poor old Erwin has never lived it down. The elephant, part of a circus act, killed a man in Kingsport, TN. The circus and town officials in Kingsport decided she should be put down and they attempted to shoot her. However deer rifles only seemed to make her madder and no one had an elephant gun. They then put her on a train and transported her to Erwin, which at the time was a major railroad facility. The railroad had a crane capable of picking the elephant up and so Murderous Mary (you can't hang an anonymous elephant that's in the Constitution I think) was 'hanged by the neck until dead' in the railroad yard. It was quite some time ago but, like I said, Erwin never lived it down. It wasn't Erwin's idea. The folks over in Kingsport just needed a tool they happened to have in Erwin, the crane. Here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_(elephant)

Now before we judge the folks in Erwin to be barbarians for hanging an elephant perhaps we should consider the event in its context. Mary was hanged in 1916. At that time the more civilized folks in the cultural centers of Europe, England, Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Serbia, Albania, Italy and France were busy killing millions of their citizens with rifle and machinegun bullets, shrapnel, high explosives and poison gas. Along with all the soldiers and civilians you could add in an astronomical number of horses engaged in military activities. Along with the appalling number of lives human and animal that were lost quite a few architectural treasures that had endured since Roman and Medieval times were turned into dust and rubble. And all those civilized folks were only half way through with all the horrors of World War I in 1916.