The Smoky Mountains is the most visited National Park in the United States. Straddling the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, the park offers hiking trails, camping, waterfalls, scenic drives, and historic sites. The Appalachian Trail also runs through the park.
Every season offers something new to explore. In the fall, the mountains are filled with the beautiful, blazing colors of changing leaves. Nearby, in winter, are the towns of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville. There are amusement parks, restaurants, shows, and other opportunities for adults and children to play. When Spring rolls around, the mountains are awash with colorful flowers, birds, and you can occasionally see a deer or even a bear. Summer brings water parks, picnic areas, streams, and rivers where tubing is available, as well as cabins to rent.
The Smoky Mountains National Park is home to a plethora of wild animals. Bears, bobcats, wild hogs, copperhead snakes can be found throughout the park. There are steep slopes, deep ravines, caves, and rushing rivers to navigate. Out of twenty-five missing persons cold cases listed on the National Parks website, only four are in the Smoky Mountains.
Father’s Day, June 13th, 1969, William Martin brought his two sons, Douglas and Dennis, to the Smoky Mountains. William’s father, Clyde, joined them on their camping trip. Little Dennis was six years old soon to be seven, but he hiked along with the group as they explored the beauty of the trails. Often, he’d run ahead. This was his first camping trip in the mountains.
The family spent Friday night at Russell Field. After breakfast on Saturday morning, William (Bill) Martin, his sons Douglas, nine years old, and Dennis, and Bill’s father Clyde began hiking to Spence Field. They planned to meet up with other family members who were waiting at a camping shelter.
They hiked from their campsite in Cades Cove along the Anthony Creek Trail, a 5.2-mile route to Spence Field, where they planned to camp that night. Spence Field is a meadow with amazing views, abundant with mountain laurel. After lunch, while the adults were enjoying the view and chatting, the children decided to play a prank on them. They hurried off to hide in the nearby forest. Doug and the other children headed south and Dennis ran north and west. The adults knew the children were up to something and waited to see what they planned. Black bears were particularly active, bold and hungry due to a drought the year before. This caused a paucity of acorns, a staple of their usual diet.
It wasn’t long before the group of children sprang out from the bushes shouting and laughing. Bill noticed Dennis was not with the group. At first he was unconcerned. After a few minutes he asked where his son was. Doug Martin admitted he and the other children ran away from Dennis because they thought his red shirt would make it easy for the adults to see them. Will and his father, Clyde, started calling Dennis but got no response. The other adults then joined them to search nearby trails and bushes.
Finally, Dennis’s grandfather, Clyde, began hiking to the Cades Cove Ranger Station. It’s a difficult hike at over nine miles round trip. It was certainly a challenge for the older man. Soon a full fledged search was underway. In addition to Park Rangers, the FBI, local volunteers, the Army National Guard, and Green Berets joined in the search. This might seem like a good idea at first. However, so many individuals tramping over trails and through underbrush might have disturbed any traces of where Dennis had traveled.
Thick rain-filled clouds opened and dropped three inches of rain as night fell. If there was any trail or evidence, it was soon washed away. Temperatures dropped to about fifty degrees that night, cold for a small child wearing only shorts and a t-shirt. Park officials found child-sized footprints in the area but decided they must have been left by one of the Boy Scouts who were helping with the search. On further examination, they realized that one was a bare footprint and the other was an Oxford or tennis shoe. Dennis had been wearing Oxfords. Following the footprints, they came to a stream where the prints ended. Was it possible Dennis had fallen in and drowned? It was unlikely as his remains or some evidence would have turned up further downstream. Eventually the Martin family stated the shoe and footprint did not belong to Dennis as his feet were smaller.
During the next few days, a thick mist along with the rain made visibility challenging. Despite those difficulties, almost 1400 people joined in the search for Dennis. Even the National Guard and the Green Berets participated in searching the trails and wooded areas for the child. Up to fourteen hundred joined the search, making it more difficult to find any recognizable trail. The searchers covered about fifty-six square miles over the next two days. Even as the number of searchers decreased, more than a thousand continued until June 26, twelve days after the disappearance. Although the search ended on June 29, it wasn’t officially closed until September 14th, 1969.
Dennis’s father offered a five-thousand-dollar reward for any information. Posters and signs with the child’s photograph were made and distributed in the hope that someone would have spotted him. A tourist reported hearing a scream and seeing a man getting into a white car not long after Dennis disappeared. He did not see a child. Authorities were skeptical because of the distance from where Dennis disappeared and the tourist saw the man. A child as small as Dennis would had to cover five miles of thick forests in a short amount of time.. Sixteen years later, in 1985, a man searching for ginseng, an illegal activity, found the skeletal remains of a child. Afraid he would be arrested for gathering the ginseng, he didn’t report the find until years later. However, the remains were not Dennis.
The mystery of Dennis Martin’s disappearance was never solved. Many theories have been put forward about what happened to him. It was speculated that he got lost and died in the unfamiliar territory, combined with the severe weather. If a wild animal like a bear or a mountain lion had attacked and killed him, there probably would have been some evidence. While the family believed he might have been abducted, and it remains a possibility, there is no evidence to support the belief.
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/foia/upload/1969_GRSM_DennisMartin_dissapearance_REDACTED.pdf
Between the Beats 