Maryville, Tennessee, is 25 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which has been reintroducing the native red wolf. The park does have pine trees, along with hemlock, red spruce and yellow buckeye among others (according to one account, there are more species of trees in the Park than in all of Northern Europe). It used to snow regularly in winter, but hasn't much lately.

I don't know about organizes crime as such, but we do have a long history of moonshiners and bootleggers (cf. "Thunder Road," which references several locations in nearby Knoxville).