Many of Tennessee's ghost towns were emptied on purpose. The Little River Lumber Company built Elkmont in 1908 and Tremont in 1926 to cut the Smokies; both ended up in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tremont when the cutting stopped in 1938 and Elkmont's summer colony when its leases ran out in 1992. In 1942 the federal government bought out the farm town of Wheat and its neighbors for the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge. Reservoirs took others: Dale Hollow covered Willow Grove in 1943, Percy Priest Lake drowned the center of Couchville in the 1960s, and the Tennessee Valley Authority moved the families of Model out for Land Between the Lakes after 1963.
Company and colony towns faded on their own. Alcoa's dam town at Calderwood was largely empty by the late 1960s. A printing union ran its headquarters, trade school and sanatorium at Pressmen's Home from 1911 until 1967. Rugby, Thomas Hughes's colony of 1880 for England's younger sons, had more than 400 people by 1884 but most colonists had gone by 1887; it is now a small village kept by a preservation group.
Several sites are on public land you can walk today, in the national park, at Oak Ridge and in Land Between the Lakes.
Abandoned 
