Picnics in the Park

For the Garland family of Maryville, Tennessee, summer Sundays in the late 1950s and early 1960s meant picnic-time in the Smokies. 

After church, dad Virgil, mom Delia, and the five Garland kids would pile into the family’s behemoth-like blue Plymouth and drive from their farm to Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

Packed inside the car trunk were a picnic dinner heavy on farm-raised foods, such as Delia’s fried chicken and potatoes and a metal Coca-Cola cooler stocked with ice-cold bottled sodas. 

To passersby, the Garlands likely looked like any family on an afternoon outing to the national park. 

But, as Christine Garland Miller, 66, fondly recalls, for her parents and siblings—as for many East Tennessee and Western North Carolina farm families—Sunday picnics in the Smokies were a chance to go back home.

 “My Daddy was raised in Cades Cove, so when we were kids, he liked to show us where he grew up,” says Miller, a lifelong Maryville resident. “Lots of times, we would take a big quilt and just spread it out on the ground and have a picnic. Or, we’d find a big ol’ flat rock next to the water, and climb out there to eat. Picnicking in the park was a big to-do for us.”

Garland also remembers stopping to eat at roadside picnic stables just outside the park boundary in Townsend and on the road leading into Cades Cove. 

Most of the tables were removed long ago, but Garland’s memories of the roadside picnics remain. 

“Canned pork-and-beans was pretty much our staple, along with potted meat and whatever Momma made,” she says. “For a picnic in the Smokies, nothing was better than potted meat on white bread with a big slice of Vidalia onion on top.”

Ticket to Ride and Picnic

Except for seasonal trolleys with limited routes, there’s no public transportation to the park from nearby cities. 

In the early years of the park, which was established on June 15, 1934, the lack of transportation likely made picnicking a pastime reserved for tourists, and for locals who either lived close enough to walk to the park or who owned a car, says Tim Fisher, assistant genealogist at Sevier County, Tennessee’s Rel and Wilma Maples History Center in Sevierville.

Owning a car or truck not only provided a way to get to the Smokies in the early years, Fisher says, it also gave you free license to go—and picnic—wherever you chose. 

SEE ALSO: Where to go

“Up until about 1958, driving was allowed anywhere in the national park,” he says. “So, people who did have a car could fish or walk or picnic wherever they could get a vehicle in—and out.”

Off-the-beaten-path park picnicking was a favorite family pastime in the 1940s for Sevier County native Larry Fox, 80, and his parents. Fox recalls regularly riding into the park in his father’s 1941 Buick to picnic in the same spot alongside a creek on a secluded old road located just past the park headquarters building near Gatlinburg.

Fox’s father grew up inside the park at the former Tremont logging camp, where his mother worked as a cook in the boxcar kitchen and his father worked as a lumberman. 

His father would drive the Buick up the road “far enough to get out of sight, but close enough to still back down,” Fox says.

He adds, “You couldn’t turn around on that old road, so backing down was the only way out. Mom would bring sandwiches on bread that already was sliced, which was a novelty at the time. Dessert was some kind of fried pie—apple was a favorite of mine—and we wouldn’t bring drinks because we could drink right out of that cold, bubbling brook. After enjoying the food, we’d lay there on the leaves and just feel good. I think Dad liked being back up there in the park. We went up there quite often to picnic, and he always talked very happily about his time in Tremont.”

While Waynesville artist Teresa Pennington’s parents grew up on farms in the Candler/Hominy Valley area, she says the Smokies were her family’s summer home-away-from-home for camping and picnicking in the early 1960s through mid-1970s. 

Pennington, who cherishes her childhood memories of after-church Sunday picnics in the park, recalls hearty picnic dinners—fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans—eaten on a quilt spread on the grass or at a picnic table beside the creek at Ocunaluftee near Cherokee. 

“I can still taste my mother’s fried chicken,” Pennington recalls. “After we ate, my sister and I would play in the frigid water, oblivious to the cold. We would pick up big rocks and build a dam across the water to create a little pool. I can still remember having shriveled and blue skin and not minding it at all.”

In later years, the family’s preferred picnic spot was Cades Cove, which remains Pennington’s “go-to place to get away.”  

“At that time in Cades Cove the water from the creeks ran over the 11-mile loop road in several places,” she says. “All the kids in the family would ride on the tailgate in the back of Dad’s Chevy pick-up truck, and let our feet drag in the creek water. To us that was just the coolest thing to do. We would count the deer we saw until we got to 150 or so and then we would stop counting.”

Dinner on the Ground

Throughout the park’s history, the quintessential “going home” picnic experience has been Decoration Day. 

Some families whose ancestors were displaced from their home places when the park was created continue to host fall homecomings, or family reunions, at picnic areas, says Sevier County genealogist Fisher. 

But, the practice is becoming less common with the passing of each generation born and raised in the park. 

What does endure is the tradition of decorating ancestors’ graves with flowers on Memorial Day, commonly known as Decoration Day in Southern Appalachian mountain communities. 

For families with ancestral burial grounds inside the park boundaries, the holiday also is an opportunity to return to family plots for a picnic, or “dinner on the ground.”

“Family is important to most mountain people, and some of them still host family reunions,” says Swain County, North Carolina native Luke Hyde, 77, proprietor of Bryson City’s Historic Calhoun House. 

“Back when I was a lad, people would have reunions around Decoration Day,” he says. “A lot of my ancestors are buried in Watkins Cemetery in Bryson City, so that’s where we’d go. What didn’t occur to me until I was grown was that my dinner on the ground experience was unusual for the South, since the families picnicking on blankets and tablecloths at their families’ graves were white, black, and Cherokee.”

According to Hyde, the white families would arrive at the cemetery in the morning, the Cherokee families would follow around midday, and the African American families would join the gathering in the afternoon. Although the groups arrived at different times, Hyde recalls that there was “playing and conversation back and forth” between the families.

“I went to a segregated elementary and high school, but on Decoration Day we all were together,” he says. “Usually, at least one preacher would preach a sermon. It was an all-day thing, and nearly 70 years later, it’s still the first thing that comes to mind when I think about picnicking in the Smokies.”

Kid-Friendly Picnic Places

Blount County mom Caroline Lamar grew up in the foothills of Smokies. Her father is Charles Maynard, an avid hiker and author of several Smokies’ hiking books. While she regularly visited the park as a youngster, Lamar admits she was a reluctant picnicker. 

“When I was a child, I always was annoyed by picnics,” she says. “Couldn’t we just get fast food instead?”

Now that she has three daughters of her own, however, Lamar says she has come to appreciate the simple pleasures of family picnicking. 

“Not only is it a more cost-effective meal choice, it also allows for more time outdoors and much better views,” Lamar adds. “We are in a very busy season of life, so I love it when we are able to carve out time for a picnic in the mountains. Away from our devices, we can have conversations we are not afforded at home. There’s something about eating outdoors that makes family meals even more sacred.”

Today, Lamar frequently picnics in the park with her school-age children. 

She also writes about her family’s exploits on her blog www.everydayadventureswithmom.com and agreed to share three of her favorite kid-friendly Smokies’ picnic spots.

The car: When weather or terrain, such as muddy or rocky ground, make a blanket picnic impossible, Lamar pops open the hatchback of her car, folds down the seats, and lets the kids eat in the car. With a car, van, or truck bed as your table, you’re free to picnic anywhere it’s legal to park.

Foothills Parkway West: While not technically in the Smokies, the Lamar kids love picnicking up on the open section of the Foothills Parkway running from Walland to Chilhowee. “You get the most incredible vistas of the national park,” says Lamar, “and you can eat close to your car, which is helpful, if you have family members who are too young for a hike or are mobility impaired.”

Sugarlands visitor center: Picnicking on the lawn in front of Park Headquarters comes with five big kid-friendly benefits: level ground (reducing spills and falls), clean bathrooms, vending machines, the relatively flat Gatlinburg Trail, which is open to bikes, and close proximity of less than 2 miles to Gatlinburg for some post-picnic ice cream.