The last remnant of Dollywood's Flooded Mine Demolished

[sdcfan88]

The last remnant of Dollywood's Flooded Mine Demolished
https://www.wbir.com/amp/article/news/local/old-mine-tunnel-next-to-dollywood-express-removed/51-e549bba4-78e4-4ed4-beb9-15b5caf54a5f

Attached pictures are from my 2017 visit to the park.

[U Smell Smoke]

Thanks for sharing the pictures, but for some reason I was thinking DW's Flooded Mine was located up near where Daredevil Falls is now.  But, sometimes my memory fails me!

[sdcfan88]

To be fair I never made it out to the park when it was still SDC and the ride was still operating so the park employee I asked might have told me wrong when I asked about the sign inside the tunnel in the last pic shown above.

I also wish to note I was also told the structure above was their version of Grandfather's Mansion at one point before it was Demo'd.

But it is a disturbing trend that they are removing unique landmarks that give the park it's character and clear cutting all the trees. Especially around the coasters. (The wooded hillside around Tennessee Tornado in particular looks like it was hit by a tornado.) I know that tunnel was a popular spot for people to sit in the shade to cool off in the summer months. (Note the benches in the bottom pic) The same trend can be said for SDC.

[Fury Fire Chief]

The flooded mine was located where daredevil Falls is now. The Cave had inventors mansion, which was similar to grandfathers mansion, above it. It was then turned in the Dolly museum when dollywood opened.  For a short while the building was used for the roller coaster museum but then sat vacant for the longest time.  There were some references to the flooded mine inside the cave though. 

When the flooded mine opened at Silver Dollar city Tennessee the big story/theme in the area was that one eye Jack escaped the flooded mine and is loose inside of Craftsmans valley.

Inside the cave was a great place to cool off, and for a while there was a gem mining store and arcade inside of it which has been closed for years.

People will miss the cave, but I believe it'll open up the walkway from the village, where the train is to Craftsman's valley. 

[shavethewhales]

I see DW is having to update areas to accommodate larger and larger crowds too. They are nowhere near as desperate as SDC of course. Their Craftsman's Valley area is so nice, and has the luxury of being built with slightly larger, slightly more modern buildings that are spread a bit more apart than SDC's history of hand-building a bunch of nearly-archetypical 1880's buildings really close together.

A little sad to see another interesting oddity removed, but such is progress. The little things like this tunnel and the waterfall walkway at SDC used to really make up a big part of the experience of visiting the parks.

[KBCraig]

I've never been to that park, and I know their theming wasn't like SDC during Miss Mary's day (and neither is SDC, for 30+ years).

But, I have to say: those are some really bad fake rocks.