As we drove up the hill to the campground we passed a sign for Rocky Top TN so I immediately broke into song. As a child of the 70s, I was as shocked that Doug didn’t know the song “Rocky Top” as he was with my rendition.
I can’t imagine you don’t know the song but if you haven’t, link is below:
It turns out that both the song and the town have an unusual history.
Apparently, in 1967, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant were working at the Gatlinburg Inn on writing songs for Archie Campbell and Chet Atkins. They are said to have written “Rocky Top”, a city dwellers lament over the loss of a simpler existence in the hills of Tennessee, during a 15-minute diversion to the task at hand.
The Osborne Brothers recorded it first in the 1960s but it gained additional notoriety in the 1970s with Lynn Anderson’s version. It didn’t take long before it was adopted as an unofficial college fight song for the University of Tennessee. It’s been covered by countless artists including Dolly Parton, John Denver, Conway Twitty, Rascal Flatts, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, Dierks Bentley, and Phish to name a few.
But is Rocky Top a real place?
According to the writers of the song, Rocky Top wasn’t a specific place, but many have suggested there’s a barren subpeak of Thunderhead Mountain that overlooks Cades Cove, near Gatlinburg that was added to maps of the western Smoky Mountains as early as 1934.
However, up until 2014, it was difficult to point to Rocky Top TN. The town of Coal Creek was established in 1798, but later adopted the name Lake City in 1936 after the Norris Dam formed an artificial lake, Norris Lake. In 2013, a business group proposed construction of a water park what was now called Lake City if the city agreed to change its name to Rocky Top. A lawsuit ensued with the owners of the song’s copyright (the Bryant’s children), but the town won its battle and as of 2014, they officially changed their name to Rocky Top. We didn’t see a waterpark as of April 2022.
We were only ol Rocky Top for just one evening. Doug managed to get out for a mile hike with Bailey. I thought I’d do the next walk with them until Doug admitted some slithering had occurred! Maybe a better song for the area would have been “Sneaky Snake” by Tom T. Hall. Another 70s song that he probably doesn’t know either.
Eastern (Black) Rat Snake (Norris Dam St Park, TN)
