My parents always dreamed of having a cabin in the mountains, and they eventually achieved that goal with a little place a few miles east of Pittman Center in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Up the hollar from where our place was, several of the local folks were displaced by the purchase of land in the 1960s and 1970s for the Foothills Parkway. These folks came as close as you've ever seen as being honest-to-goodness hillbillies. The kids typically didn't wear shoes except to school (if and when they went) or to go get some supplies that couldn't be gotten any other way or in the winter. One old guy, John Greene (no relation to our family) ran a moonshine still. We found out about that when we saw in the local Sevier County newspaper that there had been a bust on Butler Branch Road, and the traffic that had been pretty regular for several months going by our cabin on up the hollar went to near zero immediately. One guy that wasn't a "hillbilly" had built a nice little A-frame at the very end of the road, and his land was taken as well. The church near the end of the road, I think it was called Black Gum Gap Methodist Episcopal Church, was also closed due to the land being needed for this project.
I'd love to see the entire length of the Foothills Parkway be completed as it would seem to make sense after seeing all those hillbilly and other families displaced. Alas, the section between Wears Valley and Cosby doesn't seem to have ever been started. In the Knoxville News Sentinel, it was reported that "Of the seven congressionally mandated scenic highways throughout the United States, the Foothills Parkway is the only one that remains unfinished." I think it's time to finish the entire length of the road. I think another nice little ~70 mile stretch of highway through the mountains would be just fine.
