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StrangeOutdoors 12/13/24 StrangeOutdoors 12/13/24

The mysterious disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Trenny Lynn Gibson great smoky mountains disappearance

Teresa "Trenny" Lynn Gibson, Disappeared October 8, 1976, Forney Ridge Trail, Clingmans Dome (Kuwohi), Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

Revised December 2024

On Friday, October 8, 1976, 16-year-old Teresa “Trenny” Lynn Gibson went with 38 of her classmates from Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, on a horticultural field trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the area close to Kuwohi (previously called Clingmans Dome).

The students were hiking around 1.8 miles to Andrews Bald from Kuwaki and then back on the Forney Ridge Trail. That day, Trenny vanished, never to be seen again. Her disappearance is one of the most enduring mysteries from the Smokies.

Who was Trenny Gibson?

16-year-old Trenny Lynn Gibson lived with her mother, Hope Gibson, and father, Robert “Bob” Otis Gibson Sr., older brother Robert Jr., aged 19, who served in the military; younger sister Tina, aged 14, and younger brother Miracle, aged 5, at 1427 Whitower Drive in Knoxville, Tennessee.

She worked at a cafeteria in the local mall, carefully saving her earnings. She had green eyes with long brown hair and was 5’3 and 115 pounds.

Trenny Gibson disappearance — Trenny Gibson

Robert Gibson Sr. Trenny gibson disappearance — Robert “Bob” Gibson Sr

Hope Gibson Trenny Gibson disappearance — Hope Gibson

Trenny was part of a horticulture class at Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, taught by Wayne Dunlap. She was interested in plants, trees, and other living things, hoping to attend the University of Tennessee and study landscape architecture later.

Gibson property at time of the disappearance Whitower Drive Knoxville — Gibson property Whitower Drive, Knoxville

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park : location and history

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is located in North Carolina and Tennessee and is the most visited national park in the United States, with over 13 million visitors (2023).

The area is also known as the Smokies, a name derived from the Cherokee people’s “Shaconage” (shah-con-ah-jey), which means “place of the blue smoke” coming from the blue mist that floats above the peaks of the mountains.

European settlers moved to the mountains in the late 1700s on land belonging to the Cherokee people. As they cleared land for housing and crops, there was a conflict between the two groups.

In the 1830s, many of the Cherokee were forced to move west as more settlers arrived, and by the 1900s, the land was owned mostly by farmers, timber companies, and paper factories. Small communities grew into big towns like Elkmont, Smokemont, Proctor, and Tremont.

The park encompasses 522,419 acres (816.28 sq mi; 211,415.47 ha; 2,114.15 km2), making it one of the largest protected areas in the eastern United States. It straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Kuwohi, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte.

It is internationally recognized for its mountains, waterfalls, biodiversity, and forests, and the Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine through Kuwohi, marking the highest point along its 2,144-mile journey.

In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill establishing the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The goal was to save the forest and wildlife who lived there. The Park would include land from two states: Tennessee and North Carolina. In 1934, the two states donated 300,000 acres of land for the park. Another 150,000 acres had to be bought from those who lived and worked there. Money to buy the land was raised by state legislatures and ordinary citizens.

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worked to get the park ready for visitors. They built roads, bridges, hiking trails, and campgrounds for people to enjoy.

The United States Congress chartered the park in 1934 and was officially dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in September 1940. The Great Smoky Mountains was the first national park to have land and other costs paid partly with federal funds; previous parks were funded wholly with state or private funds. It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 and an International Biosphere Reserve in 1988.

The park borders an Indian reservation to the south that is home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a federally-recognized tribe who are descended from a small group of Cherokee who evaded the forced migration of the Cherokee people to present-day Oklahoma.

The Smokies’ Highest Peak – Kuwohi

Kuwohi mulberry place — Kuwohi “mulberry place”

At 6,643 feet, Kuwohi (formerly Clingmans Dome) is the highest peak in the Smokies and the third highest east of the Mississippi. From the parking lot, seven miles west of Newfound Gap, a steep half-mile path to the 54-foot observation tower that offers a 360-degree view of the Park. The road to Kuwohi is normally closed from December 1 until April 1.

Kuwohi is a sacred place for the Cherokee people and is the highest point within the traditional Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Kuwohi translates in English to ‘mulberry place”. It is significant to the Cherokee as it was visited by medicine people who prayed and sought guidance from the Creator regarding important matters facing their people and gave guidance and advice.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) voted in favor of the formal request submitted by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) to officially restore the name of Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi (in Cherokee syllabary, the name is ᎫᏬᎯ). The BGN is a Federal body created in 1890 and established in its present form by Public Law in 1947 to maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the Federal Government. The National Park Service strongly supported the name restoration.

The proposal was submitted in January of 2024 by EBCI Principal Chief Michell Hicks following an effort started in 2022 by Lavita Hill and Mary Crowe, both enrolled EBCI citizens, to restore the traditional name of the summit.

Clingmans Dome has always been known as Kuwohi to the Cherokee People. However, the highest peak in the Smoky Mountains became known as Clingmans Dome by Arnold Guyot, a geographer surveying the area. He named the peak Thomas Clingman, a Congressman and Senator from North Carolina.

To reach it, you need to turn off Newfound Gap Road, which is 0.1 mile south of Newfound Gap, and follow the 7-mile-long Clingmans Dome Road to the large parking area at the end. There is a Park Visitor Center and restrooms at this point.

Besides the trail to the summit, several trails start on Kuwohi Road in the parking area. The Appalachian Trail (AT) crosses Kuwohi, marking the highest point along its journey from Georgia to Maine. The Forney Ridge Trail leads to Andrews Bald, a high-elevation grassy bald.

The school trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

On October 8, 1976, Trenny set off with her mother, Hope, to Bearden High in Knoxville, Tennessee, for a planned horticulture field trip. The field trip location was withheld from the students until they set off to add to the excitement.

On the way to the school that morning, she asked a fellow student passing by if the field trip was still on, assuming the poor weather would mean it was called off, but they confirmed it was still going ahead as planned. She took her bagged lunch but left her purse and books in the car and didn’t take her coat.

Upon arriving at Bearden, Trenny got on the bus with 38 other students and left Knoxville around 9 am. The students were told by their teacher, Wayne Dunlap, only once seated that they were all headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Clingmans Dome (Kuwohi). They were pleased with this unexpected news, and Trenny shared a seat in the back of the bus with a friend, Robert Simpson. He was a senior and a close friend of Trenny’s brother Bob, who had graduated the previous May and was in the Navy. Bob had come home on leave and asked Robert to keep an eye on Trenny that day as she hadn’t been away from her family for an entire day before.

The bus stopped and parked at the Clingmans Dome (Kuwohi ) parking lot at around noon, the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a chilly, rainy day.

Dunlap, the supervising teacher, told the students they would hike to Andrews Bald using the Forney Ridge Trail and return to the bus meeting at 3.30 pm at the latest, observing the plants, trees, and flowers along the way. They were also told not to go further than Andrews Bald, to avoid taking side trails, and not to interfere with plant life. The students had to raise their hands to confirm they understood everything, and then they set off.

Wayne Dunlap Trenny Gibson disappearance — Wayne Dunlap, teacher of Ornamental Horticulture at Bearden High

The students broke into small groups according to their hiking pace and friendship groups. Trenny hiked to Andrews Bald with the same classmate she had shared a seat with on the bus, Robert Simpson. He loaned Trenny his brown and orange plaid wool jacket to her, as she was only dressed in jeans, a blouse, and a sweater.

Even though there were many students, only one teacher was supervising, besides the bus driver, who had stayed in the Clingmans (Kuwohi) parking lot on or near the bus.

The Forney Ridge Trail and Andrews Bald

Clingmans dome trail great smoky mountains — Forney Ridge Trail.

The Forney Ridge Trail descends from just beneath the highest summit in the national park, Kuwohi, along Forney Ridge and passes through Andrews Bald, at an elevation of 5,920 feet, before terminating at a junction with the Springhouse Branch Trail. Due to its location high in the crest of the Great Smoky Mountains, the Forney Ridge Trail is one of very few in the national park that actually descends from its trailhead. The trailhead is located just at the front end of the Kuwohi parking area, about 7 miles (11 km) from U.S. Highway 441 (Newfound Gap Road).

The trail begins easily enough at the base of the paved trail to the Kuwohi observation tower. The first 0.1 miles (0.16 km) of the trail consists of a series of leveled, rocky platforms the National Park Service put together due to the previously hazardous, steep, rocky slope. At the end of these "stairs," the trail comes to a fork with a side trail that leads onto the Appalachian Trail, which is about a half mile up (and not far past that to the observation tower at Kuwohi). The Forney Ridge Trail continues on to the left, down along the ridge for which it is named.

Although the trail is relatively easy, caution is advised. The early portion can be slippery in icy winters and may contain loose rocks. In the 1920s, the trees here were swept by a wildfire, which has given the area a mix of young shrubbery and woods, but this portion is rather short and within a mile, the trail passes into the spruce-fir zone, which has also had issues more recently with air pollution and the balsam woolly adelgid. At 1.1 miles (1.8 km), the trail comes to a split with the Forney Creek Trail, which, to the right, leads down 11 miles (18 km) to Fontana Lake.

From here, the trail actually rises up for about a quarter mile, the only such notable jaunt along its path, before levelling out and gently sloping back down to Andrews Bald at 1.8 miles (2.9 km). Andrews Bald is grassy and, at 5,920 feet (1,800 m), the highest bald in the national park. In mid-June, the Bald provides an incredible display of Catawba rhododendron and flame azalea, the best show for the least effort, although it can't quite match that of the more isolated Gregory Bald. Due to the natural encroachment of the forest onto the once-grazed open balds in the park, Andrews Bald (along with the aforementioned Gregory Bald) has been designated as an experimental research zone, whereby the National Park Service will preserve the area as a grassy bald.

Down past Andrews Bald, the Forney Ridge Trail continues its descent down Forney Ridge, eventually coming down to Board Camp Gap and its junction with the Springhouse Branch Trail at 5.6 miles (9.0 km).

The disappearance of Trenny Gibson

When Trenny and Robert reached Andrews Bald, they sat down and had some lunch. Then Trenny said she wanted to start the hike back to the bus, but Robert wanted to stay at the Bald a little longer. So Trenny set off on her own at around 1.30 pm, still wearing Robert’s jacket, walking down the moderately steep trail with sharp drop-offs and dense undergrowth on both sides.

Trenny briskly walked along the Forney Creek trail and quickly caught up with other groups of students. Angela Beckner, Lisa Mikels and Bobbie Coghill walked together when Trenny approached them. She walked faster than the group, so Bobbie started walking with her. They then caught up with Scott Troy and Anita Rounds. After about five minutes of walking with them, the group rested, but Trenny said she wanted to keep going. At the time, the group was about half to three-quarters of a mile from the Clingman's Dome parking area and the bus.

The last group that saw her had sat down to rest and invited Trenny to sit with them, but she had declined their offer and kept going along the trail. After Trenny departed from this group, the students were watching her as she stopped and crouched down. It appeared she was looking at something to the right of the trail, and then she exited it to the right downhill.

David Eastham came up from behind, but when they looked back down the trail, Trenny was not there. Off-trail was thick shrubbery, ferns, rocks, and a small creek, with no side trail visible. She called Trenny’s name but got no response. A fellow male student came down the trail, and the girl asked him if he had seen Trenny, but he hadn’t. They carried on, assuming she would be at the bus waiting for them.

At 3:40 pm, Trenny was not at the bus. Robert Simpson was asked if he had seen Trenny, but he said he had hiked to the bald with Trenny, but that she had left to return to the bus, so he decided to spend some time tracking a bear. Nobody had hiked back down the Forney Creek trail with Robert so that no one could corroborate his story.

Wayne Dunlap and another student hiked to Andrews Bald and Double Springs, but no sign of Trenny existed. The NPS was contacted by CB radio, and Ranger Sammy Lail responded and arrived at the lot at 4:30 pm, where he was briefed on the situation.

He then began to search the Andrews Bald area, but Trenny was not found. He then made an official report that she was missing in the Park, and the NPS then launched a search.

The search for Trenny Gibson

NPS employees l in Tennessee and North Carolina were asked to assist in the search, and Wayne Dunlap stayed behind to aid in the search while the bus carrying the Bearden High students returned to Knoxville. The consensus among the students was that Trenny had run off with someone.

A massive search of the park by ground and air followed. Heavy rains, wind, and fog that night made conditions challenging to search. Hoarfrost made the ground slippery, and the fall leaves made spotting difficult.

Around 19 searchers arrived between 6:30 and 8 pm, but the search effort was severely hindered by wind, rain and fog.

Hope Gibson was notified by telephone at 8 pm that evening that her daughter was missing. After Robert Gibson Sr, Trenny's father, arrived at the airport from a business trip to a business trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Gibsons headed to the Smokies with clothing that their daughter had recently worn to give scent to the tracking dogs. They arrived around midnight, and the search for their daughter was called off for the night at 3 am due to the poor weather.

The trail was popular with walkers, and her sudden disappearance was strange given that she had been with other people and there had been groups of students both in front of them and behind, as well as other hikers.

Trenny wore a blue blouse, a blue and white striped sweater, a borrowed brown plaid heavy jacket, blue jeans, blue Adidas shoes and an expensive diamond and star sapphire ring.

On October 9, 1976, a full-scale search for Trenny began, with a half-dozen dog teams with Bloodhounds and German Shepherds. Ranger Jack Linahan was the coordinator of the SAR effort. He closed the road to the public between Clingman's Dome parking area and Newfound Gap. One searcher slipped and fell, breaking several ribs.

The area from the Clingman's Dome parking area to Andrews Bald and all the side trails were thoroughly searched. Two of Trenny's uncles also participated in this search with their own dogs. Several National Guard helicopters had been obtained for the search but could not fly until late afternoon due to heavy fog. Haze and thick foliage made visibility poor, and Hoarfrost combined with fallen leaves made hiking slippery and dangerous.

A few ferns were found broken on the trail close to where Trenny was last seen, and three cigarette butts and a part-consumed can of beer were found nearby. Three tracking dogs picked up her scent at the intersection with the Appalachian Trail. They followed it by Clingmans Dome Tower, and some of the dogs last detected her scent along the roadside about a mile and a half from Newfound Gap, but then the dogs stopped, and the scent had disappeared. On the following day, eight cigarette butts of the same brand were found were found at that location.

The search continued until October 22, 1976, and then a limited search was in effect until November 2, 1976. A total of 756 people had searched for Trenny. At this point, the search was called off because no physical evidence could be found to indicate that she was still in the park. Park personnel stayed alert for any evidence as part of their regular duties.

A further search involving 230 people was organized by Robert Gibson Sr. on April 18, 1977, and lasted until May 5, 1977. All the trails, drainages and ridges between Andrews Bald and Elkmont in Tennessee, a distance of 15 miles, and Fontana Lake in North Carolina, a distance of 14 miles, were searched but to no avail.

The FBI started an investigation on October 12, 1976, but their case file was never released.

The chief ranger told reporters he was almost sure she was not in the park. Searchers returned to the Clingmans Dome area in 1981, but again, they found nothing.

Robert Gibson said of the family dog, Mitzi, Trenny’s then seven-year-old poodle, “She gets up on the back of the couch upstairs and looks out the window for Trenny when she’s gone from home. She’s been looking for her for three days”.

What happened to Trenny?

Abduction / foul play

Could Trenny have been abducted and taken out of the park where Andrews Bald Trail intersects with the Appalachian Trail.? Was she concealed somewhere like the storage area in the tower on Clingman's Dome until she was removed to a spot on the road where the dogs had tracked her? From there, she was taken out of the Park by vehicle.

While walking ahead of her classmates, Trenny left the trail and became lost. She then may have followed the Appalachian Trail and made her way to the tower on Clingman's Dome and onto the road. Instead of help, she was either abducted or met with some other kind of foul play.

Voluntary disappearance

Perhaps Trenny made the decision to leave the Gibson family behind and start a new life. But her purse, bank book, make-up, clothing, and cash at home were all left behind. She had over $1000 in her bank account, which was untouched.

Did she hitchhike out of the area, or did someone meet her in a prearranged location to drive her away? Trenny would have had to have known the trip's destination in advance to arrange for someone to pick her up. She also would have needed a location planned, and she had never visited the Smokies to pre-plan this.

Factors against this theory:

Trenny left her purse in her mother's car when she was dropped off at school that morning. She had $200 in her drawer at home and $1000 in her bank account. None of this money was taken along with her that day.
She left for the trip without a jacket and had to borrow a coat from Robert Simpson. Would she plan her departure so badly unless she accidentally forgot it?
If Trenny wanted to run away, why did she hike to Andrews Bald and back first? Why not just leave from the parking lot or home before the trip?
No hints were made to friends or family that she was planning to run away.
Trenny's older brother Robert was home from the Navy on leave and, by accounts, was inseparable. They hadn't seen each other for some time.
Trenny had injured her foot a couple of weeks before her disappearance, having punctured her foot with a small stone and was taking an antibiotic medication for it, which she left at home.

Who might have been involved?

Kelvin Bowman

Parents Robert and Hope Gibson alerted authorities about a past incident on October 11, 1975, in which it was alleged a young man called Kelvin Bowman, a student at Bearden High, had tried to break into their home. He was shot in the foot by Hope and arrested. He was charged and sentenced to serve time in a juvenile corrections facility. Although sentenced to two years, he only served around six months and was back at Bearden High by the time Trenny disappeared. When he was convicted, he had said to have made threats in the courtroom to harm Trenny when he was released. However, from what Principal Frank Hall could determine, Kelvin Bowman was attending classes at Bearden the day Trenny disappeared.

There were rumours that Kelvin and Trenny were actually in a relationship. Because he was African-American in Tennessee and this was the 1970s, Hope Gibson would have downplayed any possibility that the two of them were involved in any way.

Some students claimed they had noticed Kelvin following the bus to the mountains that day by car. But Frank Hall, Bearden High's principal, denied this, stating that he was in class that day. Wayne Dunlap was adamant that no cars followed the bus and that none of the students knew the bus's destination before its departure. It seems unlikely that Kelvin was involved.

Robert Simpson

Robert Simpson was 17, a year older than Trenny and was a friend of Bob, Trenny's older brother. He had a car, and Trenny often went on short rides together. It was claimed that Robert was very fond of Trenny, but it is unknown if they were a couple.

Trenny had shared a seat on the bus with Robert on the way to the Park that day. She was also wearing his heavy brown plaid CPO jacket when she disappeared, and she spent most of her time on the trip with him. After she left him to return to the bus, he claimed that he had gone tracking a bear.

Whilst the Gibsons were in the Park searching for Trenny, Robert Simpson came by the home and told Tina Gibson (Trenny's younger sister) that "If Kelvin Bowman has Trenny, he will kill her. If he doesn't have her, I think she might have run off with some horny hitchhiker".

Trenny always carried a large, thick Stanley comb. Both Trenny and her sister had one, and it was designed especially for long hair. Trenny was never without her comb. After she disappeared, the comb was found on the dash of Robert Simpson’s car, and he had been using it to comb his hair. Robert Gibson had seen it, and when questioned, Simpson said that Trenny had given the comb to him to keep for her.

Simpson was said to be a suspect at one point but never charged.

When she disappeared, Trenny had a star sapphire pendant and a ring, which were Christmas and birthday presents. They were found in the possession of a girl at Bearden High School in the sophomore class. She could not satisfactorily explain how she came to have them.

Kuwohi formerly the Clingmans Dome Observation tower

Aftermath

A classmate and friend, Kim Pouncey, said in an interview in late November 2017 (Appalachian unsolved) that she wondered if Trenny just took off from the park and that maybe she just wanted to leave, to get out, "My feeling is somebody was waiting for her (in the park). There was a parking lot very close. ... I've always felt Trenny planned it, and that was her way out."

During an interview in 1981, Robert Gibson expressed appreciation for all the FBI and the searchers had done. Still, he also spoke of his disappointment that the school district had no better policies to protect the students. Based on his experience as both a scout and a scoutmaster, he thought that one adult chaperone for 39 students was at least three chaperones too few.

The Gibsons did everything they could to keep their family together after Trenny disappeared, including selling their home and moving to a new neighborhood not to have so many now painful memories. But over time, the loss continued to take its toll, and in the wake of her disappearance, Trenny’s parents divorced.

Trenny’s older brother, Robert, Jr., died in 2000 at the age of 42, and Robert, Sr., her father, died in 2004 at the age of 67. Tina, her sister, passed away on March 22, 2016, at the age of 54.