Welcome to Townsend and Walland, Tennessee in Tuckaleechee Cove.  This community is located in East Tennessee, in Blount County next to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  The primary livelihood earned in Tuckaleechee Cove comes from tourism.  This area is not an overdeveloped mass of outlet malls, large hotels, attractions and traffic.  This is a quiet community and we cater to people who love the outdoors and we do it well.  We are called “The Peaceful Side of the Smokies”.  Our definition and goal of our tourism business is planned and managed by the Smoky Mountain Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Blount Chamber of Commerce as “Sustainable Tourism”.  Sustainable Tourism is defined as “a tourism business that does not harm the community or the heritage of the community”.   

People come here for many reasons.  One of them of course is fly fishing.  The National Park has 800 miles of fishable trout streams.  Hiking is another very compelling reason to visit here.  The Park is known for it’s hundreds of miles of hiking trails including the Appalachian Trail that winds through the middle of the Park for 70 miles. 

People come here to relax and enjoy the mountain views, streams, wildflowers, forest and the wildlife.  In this 500,000 acre National Park there is plenty to see and enjoy. 

Visitors like our accommodations.  Almost every motel, cabin rental company, lodge, B & B and campground is family owned and managed.  So, visitors come here for good service.  We all pride ourselves in giving good service and work as a team of friends who own small businesses here to serve you.  In this small community we all know each other and rely on our friends to help provide personal attention that you as a visitor deserve.  This “team” effort is essential to our business and we know it.

We are known for our dining.  This community has a diverse selection of restaurants featuring southern cooking, traditional cuisine, and gourmet restaurants as good as any you will find anywhere.  Some of our lodges feature the best food in the Country and one rivals every country hotel in the world. In addition to the restaurants found in Townsend we have several excellent establishments located in Maryville just 15 miles away. Again, most of our eating establishments are family owned and managed, which equates to superior service.

People are interested in Tuckaleechee Cove because of the rich heritage dating back thousands of years.  Native Americans inhabited this valley due to the proximity of water, food and isolation provided by the mountain ranges. Settlers moved down the spine of Appalachia and built homes here.  One of the most interesting settlements to visitors is Cades Cove.  This valley and many of the homesteads are preserved in Great Smoky Mountains National Park just a few miles from Townsend.  Approximately 2 million people visit Cades Cove each year. 

The logging epoch of this region provides an interesting history of how this industry managed to harvest trees and move them to the valley using small trains.  Learning about this and other historical information is available for you at our two museums, the Little River Railroad Museum and the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center.  A stop at both of these museums are a must when you visit Tuckaleechee Cove.

Tuckaleechee Cove and Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a well known and very popular destination for campers. We have every type of camping experience here for you.  There are developed campgrounds in the National Park.  There are also many backcountry campsites available to backpackers.  You probably won’t find a better backcountry wilderness camping experience than you will here.  Outside the Park are several family owned and one large company owned developed campgrounds located right on Little River.  You can use your tent or drive your home and find just what you want and more.

There is more to do in our community that can be mentioned on this page.  If you enjoy canoeing, kayaking, tubing, whitewater rafting, shooting, bicycling, music, horseback riding, rock climbing, shopping, geocatching, birdwatching, playing golf or photography we have it here or at least nearby.

This portion of our website will first tell you about where to stay.  That is a start at planning your visit.  From there we will build a website within a website describing with photos everything you can find to do here or nearby.  That will take several months but we will add new categories as they are developed.

We want you to choose Tuckaleechee Cove and the two communities, Townsend and Walland for your vacation.  And we can speak for most of our friends in the tourism business.  We’ll treat you right and we want you to come back.



Copyright 2006-2009 Little River Outfitters, Inc.