Gatlinburg and the Great Smokies

by Ernie Pyle

SEES MUSEUM

One of the places a visitor to Gatlinburg must see is the Mountaineer Museum. This is a collection of some 2000 old-fashioned mountain articles, gathered by Edna Lynn Simms.

Mrs. Simms came from Knoxville 24 years ago. She herself roamed the mountains long before the tourists came. She picked up articles, and lore, and the language of the hills. She has a bubbling enthusiasm for everything she sees or hears, an enthusiasm that has not begun to simmer down even after 24 years of mountain discovery.

Mrs. Simms’ museum is the best collection of mountain stuff in the Smokies. And in her own head is one of the finest collections of mountain speech and legend. Why, she has quoted so long that she talks like a mountain woman herself.