Most people either love Gatlinburg or they hate it — or both. Thousands of people visit this small mountain town once or several times a year and think it's the neatest place in the world. First-time visitors who expected a quaint Appalachian village arrive to find congested neon and souvenir shops stacked end to end, which can come as quite a shock.
Gatlinburg sits literally at the doorstep of the most visited national park in the United States, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The park's formation in the 1930s kicked off a boom that never stopped. The town's geography — hemmed in by mountains and parkland — means there's nowhere to expand outward, so developers just keep tearing down old structures and building taller. What started as motels and mountain crafts shops has grown into a full-scale tourist corridor: aquariums, wax museums, SkyLift gondolas, miniature golf, and more wedding chapels per square mile than almost anywhere outside Las Vegas.
The trick with Gatlinburg is to take it on its own terms. The food scene has genuine highlights, especially the traditional Southern spots that predate the tourist wave. The Great Smoky Mountains are right there — when the crowds and the fudge shops get too much, you can be in genuine wilderness in under ten minutes. Gatlinburg has a population of just over 3,000 permanent residents but draws up to 10 million visitors a year. Plan accordingly.