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Snow day
Deep in the Smokies or just out the back door? Though Jones was known to hike for miles to get the right shot, in his era—before crowds and commercialization came to Gatlinburg—he could have captured this snowy scene simply by walking into the woods behind his Main Street gallery.
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Mountain Man
Wiley Oakley was born at the base of Mount Le Conte in 1885. This celebrated woodsman was an author, entrepreneur, artist, musician, and storyteller who brought his homespun tales to a national audience and became an ambassador for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. With his intimate knowledge of the mountains, he became a legendary guide to hikers, hunters, fishermen, congressmen, businessmen, and celebrities. He was even an unofficial member of the Cherokee. A sign in front of his business, The Wiley Shop, where local crafts were sold and mountain musicians performed, read “Antiques Made While You Wait.” His nicknames—Will Rogers of the South and Roamin’ Man of the Mountains—proved well deserved.
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Material world
Handed down through several generations, many basket designs in the Smokies can be traced back to Scotland and Ireland. Typical materials included willow, white oak, birch, and vines, including honeysuckle. The basket on this craftsman’s lap appears to be what many called a “kidney” or “gizzard” basket because of its shape. A smaller design in the left foreground might have been called an egg basket. The utilitarian containers were often designed to fit the need, a striking example of ingenuity kindled by necessity. Baskets and other mountain crafts such as wood carvings and weavings were marketed by the Arrowcraft Shop in Gatlinburg, which opened in 1926 and gave the mountain people a source for much-needed cash.
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Rooms with a view
In 1916, Andy Huff built Gatlinburg’s first hotel, the Mountain View. The small wooden structure was modified and eventually became an expansive three-story hotel with a wide stone veranda and a long, inviting lobby paneled with many different native woods. A massive stone fireplace at one end served as the room’s focal point. Guest rooms featured locally made furniture, also of native woods. Several generations of the Huff family operated the hotel, which closed in the early 1980s and was demolished in 1993.
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Roads diverged
Jones often hiked great distances to capture views like this one, which focuses on a farm at the edge of a dusty lane winding through the Smokies. Closer inspection reveals cultivated fields, utility poles, a footpath leading to the outhouse and river, and what appears to be an early 1930s vehicle parked near the center building.
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Cabin fever
From this single image one can draw profound insight into the story at the heart of Smoky Mountain history. Homes like this small rustic cabin—which might have housed a dozen or more children (note the baby sleeping on the porch)—were common in the mountains. Though they were simple abodes, many homeowners clung tenaciously to them when threatened with condemnation to make room for the coming national park. These homes were built with strong hands, using skills learned from earlier generations. The stones in the chimney would have been gathered from nearby fields and streams and held together with mud mortar. The roof’s wooden shakes would been made with a few simple hand tools, from oak trees felled by the owner. The pegs on the front porch walls would have held clothing, farm implements, baskets, food items such as strings of dried beans, and perhaps a sweeper made from broom corn grown on a steep hillside behind the cabin. The iron pot would have had many uses but primarily as a wash pot for the family’s laundry. Life was hard in the remote mountains.
When artist and photographer Louis E. Jones arrived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the 1920s, he became the first artist to reside permanently in the remote mountain village and earn a living from his craft. He spent three decades capturing the beauty of the Smokies and the spirit of its people in photographs, impressionistic-style paintings, etchings, and drawings.
Though a talented painter, Jones made much of his livelihood from his photographic postcards, purchased primarily by tourists for souvenirs and as an economical means of communicating. His Great Smoky Mountains Series of postcards, some which are featured here, consists of at least 40 black-and-white images.
A native of Pennsylvania, Jones studied at Bucknell University and Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. In 1910, he and his wife, Emma, moved to Woodstock, New York, where he studied at the Art Students League and settled into life as an artist and businessman.
His work didn’t become legendary, but his Cliff Dwellers Gallery—perched on a hill overlooking the main street in Gatlinburg—did. Designed and built by Jones in 1933, Cliff Dwellers served as a residence, studio, and gift shop. The building, like nothing Gatlinburg residents had ever seen, was crafted of wood and stone and featured gabled roofs, exposed beams, decorative moldings, and balconies—architectural details similar to buildings at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony.
Two employees purchased Cliff Dwellers when Jones retired in 1955, but it was local artist Jim Gray and his son Chris who eventually became torchbearers for Cliff Dwellers. When the iconic building was set to be razed, Gray purchased the building, had it dismantled and moved—in four separate sections which took five weeks—to the Arts and Crafts Community east of Gatlinburg. The Grays later sold Cliff Dwellers, and it became a cooperative art gallery showcasing the works of area artists. Today it stands as the longest operating gift shop in Gatlinburg.
Another Gatlinburg landmark—the Little Cathedral of the Smokies, or First United Methodist Church—owes much to Louis and Emma Jones. The couple donated land behind Cliff Dwellers for the church, and Jones directed all aspects of its design and construction.
Except for the Museum of East Tennessee History in Knoxville, a private collector in New York, and a handful of people around Gatlinburg, Jones has largely been forgotten. He and Emma had no children to perpetuate their memory. Occasionally, his works show up at auctions. Case Antiques in Knoxville holds the record for a Jones painting: $12,500 for a large, untitled mountain landscape. One of his Smoky Mountains postcards recently sold for $38 on eBay. Jones customarily signed his work LEJ, or L.E. Jones, and often included a copyright.
Jones died in 1958 at age 80. “He was a prince of a man,” said church historian Peggy Smith. In 1945, when he and his wife joined the church and donated the land, Jones said, “If we don’t leave the world a little better off than when we found it, we have failed.”