A Virtual Tour of a Local’s Favorite Historic Places in the Smoky Mountains
Traveling is about a lot of things. It’s about getting away from the daily grind and freeing yourself of the responsibilities that come with work. Additionally, it’s about bonding with friends and family. It’s also about seeing other parts of the country and world and absorbing cultures different from your own.
In places like the Smokies, traveling can be about the mindless fun of a go-kart race or a round of mini golf. But traveling, at least for me, is about the history of a place. I visit the museums where the relics of years gone by are stored.
I’ve walked the same cobblestone paths as Jack the Ripper. I’ve toured the mirror-lined halls of Versailles. And I climbed to the top of Notre Dame and – like the fictional Quasimodo – looked out across the vast and sprawling metropolis that grew out from the banks of the river Seine. I’ve been to the Spanish Fort in St. Augustine and sat in the pews of Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma. But, I wonder, where would I go to seek out the historic places in my backyard? What would I recommend to someone like me, who comes to a place and wants to get a feel for its past? Let’s take a look.
1. John Oliver Cabin in Cades Cove
Cades Cove is my founding memory of the Smoky Mountains. As a little Hoosier, I’d visited the area with my aunt and uncle in 1986. But my memories of that trip are of the Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. I was impressed by the neon lights and attractions, I guess. But when we moved to the area a couple of years later, we settled closer to Townsend and the quiet side of the Smokies. One of the first things my stepdad – who moved south a few months early for a job while I finished the school year – did was take me to the Cove. We hiked to Abrams Falls. It was quite an introduction.
Growing up on the cusp of the park meant a lot of things. It meant when relatives came to visit, we’d drive to the Cove and see the sights. When I got old enough to drive, my friends and I would seek out adventure. We would often go to the Cove Loop and explore. I also went to school with a Caughron and knew others. My friend Jody is the daughter of Rex, who was the last generation born in the cove, and the granddaughter of Kermit, who was the last man to live in the Cove. Kermit was known for his honey which he sold on the honor system to tourists.
Why The John Oliver Cabin and not some others in the Cove? Well, I think John, who was the first European settler in the Cove, got a good spot. From his old homestead, you can see out across the valley to the high mountains above. For my money, it’s one of the most beautiful views in the mountains.
2. Walker Sisters Cabin
I am fascinated by the Walkers Sisters. Their cabin – in what is known now as Little Greenbrier – still stands today. The smaller half of the cabin, built by Arthur “Brice” McFalls, dates back to 1840. The original cabin was expanded over the years. Wiley King bought the land in 1853 and the cabin eventually became the property of John Walker, a Union veteran who married King’s daughter Margaret. The Walkers had 11 children, seven girls and four boys. They all survived to adulthood, a rarity in those days.
Of the 11, five – four boys and Sarah Caroline – went on and left the nest. The other six sisters – Margaret, Louisa, Polly, Hettie, Martha and Nancy (who died in 1931) – never married and stayed at the homestead. It’s said Margaret, the oldest, steered his sisters away from marriage.
When the park was formed, the government came to buy people out and move them off the land. But when FDR dedicated the park in 1940, the Walker sisters worked out a deal that allowed them to stay in “Five Sisters Cove.” As visitors flocked to the park, the sisters and their old mountain became a curiosity. They welcomed newcomers and sold them handmade crafts, toys and pies. Louisa, a poet, sold her hand-written works. A 1946 story in the Saturday Evening Post made the sisters famous though Polly had died a year before. Eventually, the sisters got too old and tired of the tourist game and asked people to respect their privacy. The poet, Louisa, stayed in the house until she died on July 13, 1964.
The homestead remains and can be accessed by parking at Metcalf Bottoms and hiking up to the Little Greenbrier Schoolhouse. From there it’s about a mile up to the Walker Sisters’ home.
3. Old Mill Campus
Many historic places in the mountains are remote and hard to get to. Very few of them have good restaurants and a place to buy alcohol and ice cream. Welcome to the Old Mill campus where history is both easily accessible and comes with treats. The mill was built in 1830 but has roots that go back further. It is in many ways the history of Pigeon Forge. Issac Love built the forge for which the town is named in 1817 after the death of his father-in-law Mordecai Lewis, one of the area’s early settlers. Love’s son William and his brothers built the mill, which is today one of the oldest continually operating gristmills in the country.
4. Dollywood
Not all history has to be stuffy. Born in 1961 as Rebel Railroad, the park that is now Dollywood is a fair chronicle of our changing culture from the late 50s onward. Also, the Dollywood Express remains a historic link to that past and the area’s prior railroad history. On top of that, the park serves as a massive museum to one of the greatest women in the region’s history. Not only is Parton an iconic singer and songwriter, but the is a massively successful businesswoman and a philanthropist of the highest order.
5. Kuwohi Observation Tower
It is difficult to pay proper homage to the history of the native people of the region for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the government’s tragic and terrible forced march to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears. This mountain and its observation tower were known as Clingman’s Dome. Last year, a petition from the Cherokee tribe was accepted and reverted to the mountain’s Cherokee name. The mountain and observation tower are important historically because they now acknowledge the people who were here before and were forced to leave. It gives a majestic view of the park. Also, the Observation Tower itself is a historic document. Its design and creation in the 1950s drew something of a media storm. Opponents of the tower and its modern design called it “flashy and conspicuous,”
6. The Fairy House
First, we should say the National Park Service doesn’t want you to visit this place. They’re using the area for behind-the-scenes park business and don’t want a bunch of tourists up in there looking at an old moss-covered pump house. However, at last check, the area wasn’t officially off-limits, so proceed as you might.
In the days before the National Park, a rich and eccentric inventor from Cincinnati married his secretary and moved to the mountains where he built his own private Shangri-la. The eccentric Louis Voorhies was obsessed with hydroelectric power and built a compound on the 38-acre site. There were 14 buildings, and several pools after he dammed the streams and residences for the craftsmen and workers he employed.
One of the structures was a stone springhouse with an archway, and misshapen stone steps leading up into the mountain. It wasn’t a fairy house when he built it, of course. But today the spring house, moss-covered and cut into the mountainside looks like something out of a fairy tale. It resembles something a character in a C.S. Lewis book would walk through to get to Narnia. But again, be aware you may get up there and have someone from the park service tell you that the Fairy House is “Narnia” your business.
7. White Oak Flats Cemetery
Back in Indiana, a small cemetery was on a hill up from my grandparents’ house. When I was bored – in the 80s I was bored a lot – I would go to the old cemetery. I’d run my hands over the faded lettering, trying to decipher – as if through braille – what had been written there. I’d wonder about the lives of the people buried there and what their history might have been.
The White Oak Flats Cemetery is located in the heart of downtown Gatlinburg. It is basically behind Fannie Farkles. When Martha Jane Ogle came up from South Carolina and began building the White Oak Flats community – finishing what her late husband had started – they had little idea of the future that was to come for the town that would eventually be known as Gatlinburg. The names in the cemetery date back to the town’s founding from Ogles to Huskeys to Clabos to McCarters to Partons to Reagans and Maples. They include David Crockett Maples Jr., the son of the famed mountaineer who lost his feet to frostbite and spent the rest of his life with wooden prosthetics tucked into his shoes.
You’ll find Oakley, the Roamin’ Man of the Mountains, who was born in 1885. And also Thomas Ogle, Sr. was born in 1784. He would have been 18 when his father died and about 20 when his mother moved the family – with the help of her brother Peter Huskey – to the mountains. Do you want to walk through the history of the European descendants’ arrival in Gatlinburg? White Oak Flats Cemetery is as good a place as any to start.
8. Ephraim Bales Cabin
Like Cades Cove, the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is a great way to explore the beauty and the history of the park. The trail takes you to multiple settler homesteads. It’s an interesting insight into the ways of the people of the Sugarlands, an area famed author Horace Kephart essentially called a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
“…a country of ill fame, hidden deep in remote gorges, difficult of access, tenanted by a sparse population who preferred to be a law unto themselves. For many a year, it had been known on our side as Blockaders’ Glory, which is the same as saying Moonshiners’ Paradise, and we all believed it to be fitly named.”
But the history of the mountains along the Motor Nature Trail goes well beyond its settlers. Many trails that branch out from there lead to Mt. LeConte. However, I recommend the Grotto Falls Trail, a relatively moderate hike that leads to a scenic waterfall where nature has cut a trail behind the falls.
So, why did I pick the Ephraim Bales Cabin? Well, it’s a great example that the people of the Sugarlands weren’t quite the outlaws that Kephart portrayed – or at least not all of them were. And once, while visiting, I was near a little girl who pointed to the historic marker with a picture of Minerva “Nervy” Bales who lived at the cabin until 1930. She said, “Look Mommy, that’s the person I saw at the cabin.” Reader, I haven’t had goosebumps like that since.
9. Rockefeller Monument
Did you know we have a robber baron to thank – at least partially – for the National Park? When the movement for the National Park got serious, money was needed to buy land and property for the people who were living in the areas that would become the National Park. John D. Rockefeller – who founded the Standard Oil Company – put up half of the $10 million required, giving the money through the foundation he’d set up to honor his wife Laura Spelman Rockefeller after her death.
In honor of that gift, a massive monument was built just off of Newfound Gap Road right at the Tennessee-North Carolina border and very close to the Appalachian Trail. When he dedicated the park in 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke from the upper tier of the monument. It’s not often you can stand where FDR stood. That might even be better than Jack The Ripper.
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