This article appeared in the Greeneville Sun on Tuesday December 11, 2003 and is used by permission from the Greeneville Sun.
This Santa Gives Bulls Gap Hotel for Railroad Museum
Gilley’s Hotel Ownership Transferred to Association
story and photos by Bob Hurley
Santa came to Bulls Gap early this year, and a lot of us are as wide-eyed and excited as any kid you’ve ever seen on Christmas morning.
James Walls not only looks exactly like St. Nick, but he is every bit as generous.
Thanks to Santa James, Bulls Gap is on its way to adding a railroad museum to the old town that planners are calling “a dream come true”.
James donated the building and property for the proposed museum, and it is not just any old place down along the tracks.
It is Gilley’s Hotel, one of the most historic landmarks still standing on the main line between Bristol and Knoxville.
“A lot of people believe we can transform the historic old hotel into a fine railroad museum, perhaps one of the finest in Tennessee” said Bill Haskins, president of the Bulls Gap Railroad Museum Association.
Ownership Transferred
All the paperwork was completed earlier in the fall to transfer ownership of the property from Wall to the association, and the wheels to restore the hotel property have been turning ever since.
“It is going to take a lot of money and a lot of work, but a lot of people think we can get enough help and enough grant money to pull it off”, Haskins said.
While no actual figures have been released as to what Walls’ donation amounts to, Haskins and other members of the museum association are saying that up to a million dollars will be needed to restore the property and transform it into a museum.
“We are not kidding ourselves here,” Haskins said. ” We know we are looking at a huge amount of money, but a lot of optimism has been expressed in terms of raising it”.
He said that details for grant applications are still being worked out, with help possibly coming from a number of sources, ranging from regional tourism funds to little-known transportation grants the U.S. Rep. Bill Jenkins, R-1st, of Hawkins county, will seek to obtain for the museum.
“Several knowledgeable people are working on the grant applications, and it will be several weeks perhaps months before we will know what is really available”, said Haskins.
Expression of Thanks
For Walls, who has played Santa in parades and other events for many years, the donation of the hotel property was simply his way of saying thanks to the little town he has come to love in 20 years.
“I considered selling it,” Walls said, “but everyone that expressed an interest in it insisted that I spend a lot of money to make it acceptable to them.”
But Walls, a native of South Carolina who has an apartment in the old hotel but also maintains a home at Laurens, which is near Spartanburg, didn’t want to undertake a project of that magnitude.
“I am not the kind of person who likes conflict,” said Walls.” By giving it all away, I will not have to worry and argue over what someone else wants to do.”
So he approached Haskins back in the summer with an offer that sounded to good to be true.
” I was working in our little museum that is now housed in the old Quillen Store Building,” Haskins said, ” when James came in and announced that he had something he wanted to give us.”
The offer came as such a shock that it caught Haskins completely off-guard.
” I don’t think any of us had ever even thought of having the historic old hotel as a possible home for our museum,” Haskins said.
Walls was working in California on an aerospace project when he became part-owner of the hotel in the early 1980’s.
Later, after becoming sole owner of the property, he entertained visions of a big restoration project himself, but it was not to be.
“After I retired from a company that had been working on the Hubble Space Telescope, the project of restoring the old hotel appeared to get larger and larger,” said Walls, now 71.
“I didn’t want to burden my family in South Carolina with a project this large, I wanted it to go to the people of Bulls Gap.”
RAIL LANDMARK
The history of the hotel is so intertwined with the history of the railroad and the town itself that it is easy for some of us to conclude that it is one of the true rail culture landmarks still standing in this part of East Tennessee.
“It doesn’t look too pretty on the outside right now,” said John Burkhart, a retired railroader who serves as a director of the museum association,” but it is very substantial on the inside.”
The inside of the building is so solid, in fact, that Haskins says visitors often express delight at what they see.
“To date from the 1800’s this building has held up remarkably well,” said Haskins.
For those of us who grew up around Bulls Gap, it has always been the Gilley’s Hotel, but we’re just seeing and talking about part of the picture.
“It was originally the Smith Hotel ,” said Haskins, whose love for trains and railroading has made him a serious student of Bulls Gap history.
“The original hotel was built in the mid- 1850’s, when the railroad was being built into Bulls Gap,” he said.
The Smith hotel became well known for its food and accommodations all up and down the line, Haskins said, until it was destroyed by fire in 1883.
The Smith family rebuilt the hotel, in the same location and by 1884, it was up and running again, bigger and better than ever.
In the very early 1900s, the Gilley name became forever linked to the hotel when a man named Rufus Henry Gilley acquired the property and continued to serve the growing rail industry in the bustling little town.
Before the Great Depression began in 1929, Gilley had expanded operations by adding a wing that provided an office and dining room for the hotel.
A lot of people still refer to it as “Gilley Hotel,” but that is not what the sign in the window says.
The sign says “Gilley’s Hotel,” which is the correct name, according to surviving family members now living in Hamblen County.
In the early years of the 1900s, the hotel hosted grand parties, and old photographs captured the elegance. The fading old photos show women in beautiful formal dresses and men who are decked out formally in black bow ties and long coats.
“Bulls Gap was really something when the railroad was in its heyday,” Haskins said,” and we want to capture that atmosphere and preserve it for future generations”.
While current museum displays are limited by space, Haskins says a much larger facility will open up ” a whole new world for telling the railroad story.”
John Peeler, a retired railroader and former mayor of the town who is now an active member of the museum association, says a larger facility is needed to house and display this vital part of Bulls Gap history.
“We certainly don’t know about the future, but a lot of people are excited as they can be over the prospects of a really fine museum coming to Bulls Gap,” Peeler said.
“If we can get the money, we can get the job done,” Peeler added.
In addition to the railroad artifacts and memorabilia being acquired by the museum, a lot of interesting letters and personal experiences are popping up as more and more research is conducted.
Just this week, for instance, Haskins and other members of the association were enjoying an old letter from the 1800s.
“We don’t know the name of the person who wrote the letter,” Haskins said,” but we do know that he was very impressed with Bulls Gap in general and the hotel in particular.”
The letter, in part, says the hotel “is a modern, first class establishment in all that the term implies.”
I grew up along the tracks of the old Southern, just a couple of miles east of the old hotel. But I never got to go there as a kid. The hotel was always for someone else.
There was always talk of the hotel. I heard it all the time. In the 1950s along the main line of the Southern, it seems the subject was always the Gilley’s Hotel, yet I never got to go.
And that, perhaps more than anything, helps explain the charm and the mystique the old building still hold for some of us.
In the past it was always there, but never for us. It is still there, seemingly in arm’s reach of the rails, and now it is our job to keep the charm and mystique alive for generations still unborn.
Bulls Gap is far different today from the time when steam locomotives were converging on the little town from all directions, but a lot of people are unwilling to let those memories die.
“I really believe this thing will fly,” John Burkhart said. ” This is still a railroad town, and I believe we are seeing a renewed interest in rail history among our young people.
“The railroad has played such a key role in the life of this community that we desperately need to keep the story alive for those who will follow.
“It is a story well worth telling, and if we don’t tell it, it will not get told”.
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