Blue Ridge Country May/June 2023 - 15

OUR BLUE RIDGE TOWNS
TN TOURISM | JEREMY RASNIC
church in the area, organized in 1785. The log structure is
long gone, but many of the cemetery stones remain, most
unreadable, some little more than native rock buried in
earth. If you wander down the hill, a strong spring still
flows, one of the draws for settlers, Jarnagin says.
He's understandably proud of his place, where Greek
Revival and Federal Style architecture abound and still
house functioning businesses and government offices.
" Our downtown buildings are more than museums-
we're a working, living town. "
(Nowhere is this more evident than in Tinsley-Bible
Drugs, where an old-fashioned lunch counter/soda fountain
and a functioning pharmacy with a new, young
owner draw both long-time residents and thousands of
visitors. Dating back to 1911, Tinsley-Bible is a must-see.)
The visitor center is housed in an 1820s coach house,
and it's where you can pick up a well-documented Dandridge
downtown walking tour guide that also includes a
driving tour of outlying areas. (It speaks volumes about
this place that the maps were made in conjunction with
Jefferson County Schools' Service Learning Class, including
QR codes for audio narratives.)
Roger Kelley works the visitor center desk, and tells
stories as willingly as Bob Jarnagin. Kelley's family was
removed from the nearby Cosby area (which he calls " the
quiet entrance to the Smokies " ) during construction of
the park. And he tells the story of how Dandridge saved
its downtown as well.
" We almost lost our downtown in 1942, " Kelley says.
" It was all part of the Manhattan Project, 50 miles northwest
of us in Oak Ridge. Plutonium and uranium were
being tested in order to develop the first atomic bombs.
Douglas Lake was being built to provide hydroelectric
power for the project. Top secret, all of it. "
Because downtown Dandridge lay below the proposed
water level, it would have gone underwater. So the town
quickly put together a six-member planning commission
that went to Washington to plead their case. The plan:
to build a massive earth-and-stone dike to keep the lake
above Dandridge.
Some say it was Eleanor Roosevelt who made that
happen; others attribute it to FDR. Whoever managed to
negotiate the saving of this place, the Army Corps of Engineers
came and built " the dike that saved Dandridge, "
rising high above Main Street and shadowing Town Hall
in the late-afternoon light, an inescapable reminder of
what almost was.
The rest is history. Forty-three-mile-long Douglas
Lake filled, displacing 525 families and covering rich,
multigenerational farmland. " History lost ... and history
made, " Jarnagin points out.
Can Dandridge keep what makes it special? It's far
enough from Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg that its quiet,
natural beauty and functioning historic downtown make
it unique in that part of Tennessee. But both Jarnagin and
Kelley point out that their town " has been discovered. "
Over the past couple of years, they've seen an influx of
urban refugees seeking small-town quiet, and real estate
is selling fast.
I'm thinking that a town savvy and determined
enough to save itself from drowning-and makes its slogan,
" We Saved a Place for You " -will likely hold its own
nicely.
If you want to know more about the Dandridge and
Jefferson County story, go to projectletschat.org. Organized
by three young Dandridge residents, the project records
and posts oral histories with the slogan " Our town
through 10,000 stories. "
MAY/JUNE 2023 15
http://www.projectletschat.org
Blue Ridge Country May/June 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country May/June 2023
