Lake Loudon

GPS Start
- Trail begins at 3113 Montlake Drive

Welcome to the Loudon Lake Dogwood Trail, which begins in a high wooded area where native white dogwood trees abound, and wold redbuds spread pink parasols above the garden plantings!

After winding uphill and down, Timberlake Drive slopes sharply to the level of Fort Loudon Lake. During this descent, look straight ahead for the first view of the shining lake and the distant misty mountains.

At the bottom of the hill, turn right onto Maloney Road, named for an earlier settler, James Maloney, who built his log cabin beside this little inlet. His great-grandson, General James Maloney, was a prime mover in establishing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Most of the handsome homes on the Loudon Lake Trail are relatively new, but the large white farmhouse on the right ahead, is an exception. It was built in the 1890’s.

Leaving Maloney Road, the trail rises to circle the centerstrip of Bluff Point Drive. At #3529, look for the dogwood tree growing through the roof of the porch!

Another right turn from Maloney Road leads past a Victorian summerhouse and a rustic split-rail fence to a natural sunken rock garden in a shady area replete with wildflowers.

A right turn onto Blow Drive brings the trail out on a high overlook, with vistas of the Sequoyah Hills Dogwood Trail upstream, and the Westmoreland Dogwood Trail directly across the lake. The large building on the opposite bluff is Cherokee Country Club, seen from the rear.

Turn left on Manor Drive beside the grounds of Dogwood Manor, a Greek Revival mansion with a fascinating history. The house was built about 1830 in Tazewell, Tennessee – more than fifty miles from Knoxville – where it survived the Civil War Battle of Tazewell. Almost a century later, when a new highway threatened its destruction, it was moved to this location, brick by numbered brick.

In the small private cemetery, on the left, is the grave of a Revolutionary War soldier who was probably the first white settler in the area covered by the Loudon Lake Dogwood Trail. North Carolina paid its Revolutionary Militia in “land warrants” good for tracts of wilderness land west of the mountains in what is now the State of Tennessee. Chances are, Private Wells received this acreage as his land grant.

After circling down to the very water’s edge, the trail returns along Maloney Road. The buildings on the opposite bank are part of the state’s Lakeshore Mental Health Institute.

Beyond a stretch of handsome homes surrounded by flowering trees and masses of spring-blooming bulbs, Fort Loudon Lake widens into a mirror that reflects its wooded shores. Ahead on the skyline rises the majestic Great Smoky Mountains.

Fort Loudon Lake is one of the “Great Lakes of the South” created by TVA for hydroelectric power production and flood control. A series of mainstream dams and locks on the Tennessee River has made possible a 9-foot shipping channel that links Knoxville to the Gulf of Mexico. Pleasure craft of all sorts and sizes cruise the TVA lakes, and there is something unique about the boathouses that shelter them. Each lake’s water level is controlled by a downstream dam, and the water may rise of fall several feet in a matter of hours. For this reason, boathouses on the lake shores cannot be stationary; they must be supported on air filled buoys.

Just past a little inlet, on the right, a small marina offers a glimpse of these unusual floating boathouses.

The Spacious and comfortable white house on the right is typical of East Tennessee’s nineteenth century farmhouses. It stands at the edge of an agricultural experiment station belonging to the University of Tennessee. The tall windmill just visible on the right ahead was a gift from the Australian Pavilion at Knoxville’s 1982 World’s Fair. It now is part of the University’s solar housing experiment.

Loudon Lake Dogwood Trail ends at the busy Alcoa Highway, and downtown Knoxville is to the left. For safety’s sake, PLEASE TURN RIGHT, and make a left turn at the next cross-over lane.

We hope you have enjoyed your visit to the Trail where lake and mountains meet! Be sure to enjoy the Dogwood Arts Festival with its scores of special events including art exhibits, craft shows, opera, symphony and bluegrass music, world class sports and much much more. It’s one festival after another and the “Best 17 days of Spring in America!”