THE SECRET SIDE OF THE SMOKIES

There’s no better place to unplug than Cataloochee Ranch and the mountain communities in western North Carolina

- BY TARA MASSOULEH MCCAY PHOTOGRAPH BY CHERYL ZIBISKY PRODUCED BY MARY KATHERINE MORRIS

Wide-Open Spaces Established back in 1933, Cataloochee Ranch is a resort just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

TOM ALEXANDER’S initial experience in the western North Carolina mountains left such an impression that even after work whisked him down to Florida, he found his way back. Eventually, the Georgia-born forester built a life and a NEARLY 100-YEAR LEGACY around introducing visitors to the very same peaks he first fell in love with.

His vision began in the early 1930s when Great Smoky Mountains National Park was in its fledgling days. An avid outdoorsman, Alexander was hosting fishing camps in the area when a park superintendent offered to lease him an existing homestead inside the park. The resulting guest lodge was the predecessor for his life’s work, Cataloochee Ranch. After a short stint in Florida, he and his wife, Judy, returned to build the ranch on a 685-acre potato farm on the boundary line of the national park in 1933.

A couple of things have changed since Cataloochee first opened. The national park went from being lesser known to becoming the country’s most visited, welcoming 12.2 million people in 2024 alone. The Alexander family, who stewarded their patriarch’s operation for more than eight decades, eventually passed it into the capable hands of Annie and David Colquitt (owners of the nearby luxury resort The Swag) in 2020.

When the Colquitts took over, they had a plan to introduce modern comforts to the historic property, but their bigger concern was keeping its integrity in place. As Mary Coker, one of the Alexanders’ granddaughters, said in an interview following the purchase, “The feel was that if you have the heart and soul of Miss Judy and Mr. Tom, then everything else was the spokes of the wheel.”