The bizarre disappearance of Dennis Martin from the Great Smoky Mountains
Dennis Lloyd Martin disappeared June 1, 1969, Spence Field, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennesee.
Revised September 2024
On June 14, 1969, seven-year-old Dennis Lloyd Martin, his 9-year-old brother Douglas, his father Bill, and grandfather Clyde went camping for the Father's Day weekend in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The Martin family was accompanied by some family friends and two young boys. That day, Dennis disappeared without a trace.
What is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park?
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is 522,419 acres in size and straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Smoky Mountains are commonly shortened to the Smokies. The border between Tennessee and North Carolina runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park.
It was chartered by the United States Congress in 1934 and officially dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.
The park contains some of the highest mountains in the east, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The Appalachian Trail passes through it on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 12.5 million visitors in 2019, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.
The Smokies are covered with drainages eroded by creeks, with many giant boulders and steep cliffs cut with crevices. There are occasional wild cats and resident black bears, and the landscape also features thickets of trees and vegetation that can trap you if you stray from an established trail.
In March and April each year, hungry bears come out of hibernation. They are at their most dangerous when there isn't much food around, but even in the summer, they are known to attack people in the area.
The visit to Russell Field in the Smokies
The Martin family set out for a walk from the Cades Cove Campground, where they were staying, and they continued on for several more miles in the warm summer weather.
They moved along Leadbetter Ridge above the Left side of Anthony Creek and made their final walk of the day to Russell Field, a grassy clearing in the forest with panoramic views across the Smokies. There, the Martins camped the night and headed on June 14 for the 90-minute walk east to Spence Field.
The disappearance of Dennis Martin
Dennis Martin Reward poster
Late in the afternoon, the boys from the two families were playing "hide and seek" in a grassy area of Spence Field and planned to sneak up and scare the adults.
Douglas and the other two boys went south and west. Dennis went northwest, towards the Appalachian Trail, and disappeared into the forest. A few minutes later, the boys jumped out of the woods, but Dennis was nowhere to be seen.
Between three and five minutes had passed without anyone spotting or hearing Dennis. At that point, his father, Bill Martin, began calling out to him. Bill then followed the Appalachian Trail west for about a mile before heading back. He headed west again, this time all the way back to Russell Field, only to return, alone, to Spence Field. But no sign at all of Dennis was found.
The search begins
While the boys’ father was making this journey, the grandfather, Clyde, made his way back down Anthony Creek to Cades Cove, a distance of roughly 8.5 miles. He reached the ranger station shortly before 8:30 p.m. to summon help. At this point, it began to rain very heavily with a nasty storm. In common with many, many disappearances in the National Parks, bad weather seems to hit the immediate area either immediately or within hours, hampering rescue efforts, especially for sniffer dogs.
Specialist searchers began looking for Dennis in the following days, and Green Berets even turned up unexpectedly but had little or no contact with the core group. The search group increased to around 1,400 people, and 1,110 helicopter sorties were flown. Several more inches of rain washed clues away, and the hordes of people and the weather made roads too muddy to travel by vehicle. Helicopters began transporting search crews from Cades Cove to the mountaintop, but fog frequently kept them grounded.
Dennis Martin search team
Dennis Martin search team
Despite all this manpower and two weeks of official searching (and unofficial searching until September), nothing was ever found.
The only evidence was a shoe print found by the West Prong, but given the foot traffic from searchers in the area, it was uncertain whether it belonged to Dennis.
Further evidence
A few weeks after the disappearance, a family reported to the authorities searching for Dennis that they heard the scream of what they believed was a young boy. They were hiking in the woods near Rowan's Creek, around 7 miles from where he had vanished. They also noticed an "unkempt man" at the edge of the trees with something over his shoulder. The FBI said this was impossible and too far away, so they never even informed the Martin family.
Several years afterwards, an illegal ginseng hunter would come forward, claiming he had found the skull and other remains of a small boy in the same vicinity around Tremont's Big Hollow. However, a detailed search of the area yielded no results so many years after the incident, as the man had feared that he might be arrested for his illegal activity in the region, which led him to the discovery. A ranger called McCarter said that the skull remains were allegedly found about 3-3.5 miles downhill from where Dennis was last seen.
The lead park investigators believe that Dennis "Got disoriented and perished in the wild." But death could have been caused by falling or drowning or by an animal attack. The family believed Dennis was abducted as there was a road track near the field. Read the search and rescue report
Key locations
Russell Field: This is where the whole family was the day/night before the tragedy. The next morning, they hiked to Spence Field.
Spence Field: The site of the tragedy, where Dennis Martin vanished without a trace after splitting off from his brother and the unrelated Martin family friends' children when planning to sneak up and scare the adults at the site. This was on June 14, 1969.
Sea Branch: (Rowan's Creek): The area where witnesses heard a "sickening scream" on the afternoon that Dennis Martin vanished and saw an unkempt man about three minutes later moving in the woods toward the scream. The time frame he gives is about 7 PM. The distance is about 7-9 miles from Spence Field.
West Prong (Near Pigeon River): The area where the Oxford-type shoe print similar to what Dennis was last seen wearing was found. Investigators did not examine the shoe print finding in detail because the area had already been searched. However, it is noted that there were no small children involved in the search. This print was found at least after one rain storm had already been in the area.
Tremont's Big Hollow: The area where the skull bones of a small child were allegedly found a few years after Dennis went missing. The person finding the skull did not report it until 1985. The area is around 3 miles away from where Dennis was last seen at Spence Field, and 9 miles away from where the scream and unkempt man were reported by the witness.
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Further viewing and reading
The Missing Enigma: Dennis Martin - A Great Smoky Mountains Mystery
The Missing Enigma: Police Officer Michael Bouchard Returns To Talk About The Dennis Martin Case
Knoxville News Sentinel: Mysteries of the missing: An in-depth look at the disappeara
The Disappearance of Dennis Lloyd Martin: Lost in the Great Smoky Mountains Paperback – March 11, 2021 by Michael C. Bouchard (Author)
Sources
https://eu.knoxnews.com/picture-gallery/news/local/tennessee/2019/06/06/disappearance-dennis-martin/1286102001/
https://eu.knoxnews.com/story/news/2018/10/02/massive-1969-search-dennis-martin-produces-lessons-future-searches-smokies-archives/1496635002/
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bridgeport-cop-s-30-years-of-stories-have-12494757.php#photo-14877525
https://eu.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/2019/06/06/dennis-martin-disappearance-timeline-search/1337772001/
https://archive.knoxnews.com/news/local/wallace-estill-ex-head-of-knox-fbi-dies-at-92-ep-407969741-358603091.html/
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