Pittman Center, TN

Pittman Center is a Sevier County town in Emerts Cove, eight miles east of Gatlinburg and beside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Frederick Emert arrived in 1784, and the cove kept his name. A Methodist missionary, John Sevier Burnett, turned the isolated valley into a community center in 1920, with a school, store, post office, clinic, farm, and orchards on a 1,500-acre campus. The town took the name Pittman Center when it incorporated in 1974, honoring Burnett's friend Rev. Eli Pittman. U.S. 321 passes through, but the local read is cove, river, school, and the Greenbrier entrance nearby.