Wonderland Hotel
The Wonderland Hotel was a hotel built in 1911 at Elkmont, Sevier County, Tennessee by the Wonderland Club Company and was dismantled and partially preserved in 2006 by the National Park Service.
The Little River Railroad, which owned a number of tracts of land in the area in 1909 built a logging railroad from the town of Walland, Tennessee to the company town of Elkmont. Connecting to a branch line of the Southern Railway, the Little River Railroad Company discovered and began to promote the Elkmont region as a good hunting and fishing area and began transporting men who wanted to visit the area for this purpose. Elkmont was a station on the Little River Railroad Company which provided access to Knoxville via a two-hour train ride until the mid-1920s. As the area was "logged out", Little River Railroad Company President Col. W.B. Townsend was aware of the future benefits of attracting large numbers of tourists to the area. With this in mind, in 1911 he gave Charles B. Carter 50 acres (200,000 m2) of cut over land with the stipulation that he build on the land within one year. Carter formed the Wonderland Club Company and on June 11, 1912 the Wonderland Hotel opened its doors. It would stay open for seven years.
In the seven years that the Wonderland Club was open to the general public, so many men came to the area that the more affluent decided that they wanted their own facility and formed the Appalachian Club. They purchased a large tract of land from the Little River Lumber Company which owned over 76,500 acres (310 km2) in the area between Gatlinburg and Cades Cove in what is today the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The families built cabins and a clubhouse on the land and commuted via the Little River Railroad to the area during the summer months. This club became so popular that it was soon turning away prospective members. In 1919 a group of these men that could not gain access to the Appalachian Club got together, formed their own Association, and rather than building their own hotel, purchased the Wonderland Hotel and the buildings in its vicinity. The name was changed to The Wonderland Club Hotel. The hotel was owned jointly by members of the new association, and they closed the doors of the hotel to all but the Association members and their guests. About a year later, in 1920, a number of members of the club desired more privacy than the hotel could provide and an annex was built next to the Wonderland hotel on the West side, offering additional guest rooms. This annex remained private up until the hotel closed its doors for the last time under the provisions of the lease with the National Park Service. Some of the rooms in both the hotel and the annex were privately owned but could be rented out when their owners were not in residence.
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