GATLINBURG, Tenn. (WATE) — June 14 will mark 56 years since Dennis Martin disappeared in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The quiet boy from Knoxville was just a few days away from his 7th birthday the last time he was seen.
More than five decades after Dennis Lloyd Martin’s disappearance, Nexstar’s WATE obtained the National Park Service’s case file, which details how the search for the boy was conducted after he vanished from Spence Field.
The weekend of Father’s Day 1969, Dennis Martin was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on a trip with a group, which included his father, grandfather, and 9-year-old brother, the case files revealed. The group was in the area of Spence Field, along the Appalachian Trail, after staying the night at a shelter cabin on the west end of the field.
As the adults in the group sat in a grassy area of the field to the southwest of the Anthony Creek trailhead, Martin, his brother, and two other boys were playing near the trailhead. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System said that the boys were playing hide and seek, but the case file says that the boys decided to sneak up on the adults, so they split up. The three other boys went south and then west, while Martin went northwest and was supposed to loop back from the north and surprise the adults. Instead, the last time anyone saw Martin was when the boys parted ways around 4:30 p.m.
According to a timeline in the case file, Martin’s father said he became concerned about three to five minutes after the last time Martin was seen and began calling for him. He began searching on the Appalachian Trail, returned thinking that Martin might be back with the rest of the group and then continued to search the Appalachian Trail. Shortly before 8:30 p.m., Martin’s grandfather notified rangers in Cades Cove that the boy was missing.
Although there were attempts to search that night, the timeline notes that heavy rain and thunderstorms hampered the efforts, with an estimated 2.5 inches of rain in the area. The streams in the area were reported as high and turbulent. Rangers and family members searched the immediate area around where Martin was last seen throughout the night, and the chief ranger set up a plan for the next morning.
On Sunday, June 15, 1969, what would become one of the largest searches for a missing person in National Park Service history up to that point began.
The first morning of the search began around 5 a.m., with experienced NPS personnel and searchers checking the West Prong of the Little River, Anthony Creek, and the drainages for Little Bald and Spence Field. As they searched, a ranger also checked the Eagle Creek trail, the only trail that had not been accounted for the night Martin went missing.
As the search continued throughout the day, more people joined the search, including visitor horse parties and two groups of Boy Scouts who were camping in the area. Additionally, a helicopter was hired to take equipment to Spence Field so a base camp could be established. Two Huey helicopters were also dispatched from the Warner-Robbins Air Force Base in Macon, Georgia, to join the search.
One aspect of note in the search was that, because it rained after Martin disappeared, scent-tracking dogs were not used initially. Although the rain likely washed away the scent trail Martin would have left, when reviewing the search later, park officials noted that dogs should have been used, as Martin would have created a new scent trail if he was moving after the rain passed through the area.
Over the course of the next two weeks, an estimated 1,800 to 2,000 searchers combed the area searching for Martin. On Friday, June 20, the chief ranger began determining what the plan would be if Martin were found alive or dead. By Sunday, June 22, the area searched had reached more than 56 square miles, with 12-and-a-half square miles being intensively searched.
“The logical search area had been reached. Nothing at all had been found,” the narrative in the case file read.
The search still continued, although the number of searchers seemed to be scaling back. Search crews on Saturday, June 21, were estimated to be around 1,400, the highest number of the search. The next day, the estimated number of searchers was 1,000, but on Monday, the number of searchers dropped to 400.
That Monday, a Spartanburg, South Carolina, police dog was also used in the search, but it did not uncover any results. Throughout that week, rangers investigated a report of a boy seen wearing similar clothing to what Martin was wearing when he disappeared, as well as a report of a “decaying odor” near the park line that was determined to be a dog carcass.
On June 29, 1969, a meeting was held with Martin’s parents, an FBI agent, the chief ranger, and two other rangers to discuss where the search would go from there. Some of the points from that discussion that are included in the case file were that there was no evidence to support a kidnapping, and that the chief ranger said they were prepared to continue the search for up to 90 days with three of their best men, who could also handle volunteer searchers. After the discussion, the operation at Spence Field was closed down.
At that point, more than 13,000 manhours and $50,500 of services, equipment, and supplies were used in the search. In letters, National Park Service officials noted that there were more volunteers than they could accommodate and that the search was “undoubtedly” the “most extensive of its kind in the history of the National Park Service.”
The remaining search for Dennis Martin involving the three park employees officially ended on September 13, 1969. Six days before that, a letter written by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park superintendent said that he and the assistant chief ranger shared the personal opinion that if Martin is ever found, he would be found within a few miles of the shelter near where he disappeared.
In October 1969, a comprehensive review of the search operation was completed to learn how future searches could be conducted better. Possibly the key takeaway learned, the report stated, was that because of how quickly the search developed, the park failed to realize that they needed quick organization of manpower, overhead, and public relations. The report also noted that they lost manpower because rescue squad members or volunteers were not properly equipped. Among changes for future searches, the park said there was a need for a safety officer, for search dogs to be used sooner, and for a press officer to keep the public better informed.
When Martin went missing, he was approximately 4 feet tall and weighed about 55 pounds. He had brown, wavy hair and dark brown eyes. If he were found alive today, Martin would be 62 years old.
The post 6-year-old Dennis Martin still missing after disappearing in Smokies in 1969 appeared first on WHNT.
