Cades Cove Heritage Sites (Part II): Cable Mill Area

Thursday, 19 April

I mentioned before that the Cades Cove Loop is open to one-way traffic only.  What that means is that if you dally along the way, the heritage sites along the top half of the loop are over-crowded by the time you get to them.  So, we devised a plan to explore the sites along the bottom of the loop in a piece-meal fashion the first couple of days (post here), and make a special trip for the rest on another day when we’d drive pretty much straight through.  Of course, that meant being at the gate to the loop at sunrise to be amongst the first on the road, but it paid off.  We reached the Cable Mill Area just before 8:00a, and had the site entirely to ourselves for the first hour we were there.

Cades Cove Map scanned from the Auto Tour booklet; the Cable Mill area, which is
the focus of this post, is circled in blue.

The Cable Mill Historic Area is probably the most visited section of the loop.  This is partly because there is a visitor center here.  Mostly, however, it’s because in this complex one finds a gristmill that is original to the area and a collection of buildings that were brought here from other parts of the park and reassembled to create a microcosm of the early 1800s pioneer culture that the NPS aims to preserve.

Detail drawing of the Cable Mill Historic Area.
[scanned from the cades cove auto tour booklet]

After looking through my photos of this area, I found that I liked them best in B&W.  Partially, because the sunlight streaming through the heavy canopy created very contrasty light conditions for photos; and partially because this treatment seemed to fit the mood of the area better.  So here we go — a virtual trip in B&W …

Welcome to the Cable Mill Historic Area!

If there was one essential staple in the life of early pioneers, it was corn.  It was a dependable grain, and it fed not just people, but livestock as well.  And it could also be used to make a potent beverage!  Though single family tub mills were numerous in the Smokies, they weren’t very efficient, grinding no more than a bushel of corn a day.  Enterprising farmers would sometimes build a mill powered by a waterwheel and charge other families for grinding their corn.  Though the form of payment was sometimes cash, more often it was a portion of the ground flour or meal.  Most of the mill owners were farmers, and milling was a part time occupation for them.  The mill would be open during specific hours/days, and if a customer arrived outside those hours, they could ring a bell to summon the miller.

(John Cable used the waterwheel to also power a sawmill, which was instrumental in the change from building log homes to building lumber and frame homes.)

Built in 1868, Cable Mill was one of the few mills that served the 700 residents of Cades Cove.

Cable Mill doesn’t open to the public until 9:00a, but Miller Bobby was kind enough to chat with us as he prepared the mill for its daily operation.  As he walked down to the wheel to grease the gears, he explained that a bear had figured out how to remove the gear cover so that it could lick off the fat.  “Yesterday, the rangers used mechanical grease to discourage the bear; we’ll see if he comes back tonight,” he told us.  Then, slathering on a thick layer of animal fat, which is what millers of old would have used to grease the gears, he replaced the cover the bear had removed.  I can just picture the bear’s reaction to getting a mouthful of less-than yummy mechanical grease.

Miller Bobby graciously poses for a photo op.

Leading us inside, Miller Bobby then gave us a sneak peek into the rest of the operation.  We watched as he meticulously checked gears, made sure the hoop around the grinding stones was set right, and put some corn in the hopper to do a test run of the grinding stones.  “Sometimes, I have to prod it a little,” he said, as he gave the gear shaft under the platform a gentle shove with a stick.  And sure enough, a trickle of corn meal started coming down the chute soon after.

Miller Bobby gets the mill ready for visitors.

Thanking Miller Bobby, we set out to explore the rest of the buildings in the complex, which is surrounded by a snake rail fence.  Speaking of those slithery creatures, there was a sign near the entrance warning visitors that snakes are active around the buildings.  You can be sure that I was extra cautious about where I went and what I did, and there was no rolling around on the ground like I often do when I’m photographing things of interest :-)

Our first stop after the mill was the Gregg-Cable House; it’s one of the structures brought here from elsewhere in the park.  Constructed in 1879 from lumber that Leason Gregg purchased from John Cable’s sawmill, the house is named for its original builder and its subsequent owner — “Aunt” Becky Cable, daughter of John Cable.  By all accounts, she was a remarkable woman, helping her brother manage his store, opening her house to family boarders, farming her land, and caring for her brother’s orphaned children.  She lived in the house until she died in 1940 at the age of 96.

The Gregg-Cable House may well have been the first framed house in Cades Cove.

After living in log cabins, a framed house such as this one was what most people aspired to build.  Those who couldn’t afford to build a framed home put up siding to hide the exterior of their log homes.

There were no furnishings to give visitors a sense of what the interior might have
Looked like back in the pioneer days.  (Center top image is a Historic photo of aunt Becky.)

Behind the house we found two more buildings that were reassembled here — the corn crib and the barn.  The corn crib was an essential structure on every mountain farm.  After the corn was harvested from the field, the unshucked cobs were dumped into this crib and left to air-dry so that the corn could later be ground into meal or used as chicken/livestock feed.

The slats were positioned with enough open space between them to provide
air circulation, but still keep the corn cobs from falling out.

The barn behind the house is one of two in this complex.  In fact, farms of the time — especially if more than one generation lived on them — often had more than one barn.

The drive-through design provided a protected place for farm equipment and animals.

Out in front of the house, we found two structures that were vaguely familiar.  One looked like a mill of sorts and the other looked to be a kiln or furnace of some kind.  It turns out that we were on the right track.  Miller Bobby, who was walking nearby, explained that the horse-driven mill was used to crush de-leafed cane stalks, and the resulting juice was then boiled down in the furnace to make sorghum molasses, a popular sweetener.

Sorghum mill and furnace; the two vertical rollers in the top section of the mill crushed the stalks of cane, and the juice was collected below.

Our next stop was the cantilever barn.  The design, which originated in Europe, allowed the second story of such barns to be larger than the base.  The loft was used to store hay and fodder, and the eaves afforded the animals, which were usually roaming about outside, a protective overhang when they wanted to get out of the rain or sun.  The eaves also sheltered any farm implements that were placed under them.

Logs extending out from the top of the cribs on either side support the second story.

Images from the cantilever barn show the pass-thru between the two cribs and some
of the farm implements placed under the eaves for protection from the elements.

Iron was an essential material in pioneer life.  As such, a blacksmith shop was very important to these mountain communities.  The blacksmith not only forged the tools needed on the farms, he made decorative items such as candlesticks as well.  He was often the one who shod the mules and horses, and repaired wheels.

Our last stop before leaving the complex was at the blacksmith shop, which is not an original structure; it was constructed as an example of a typical shop of the pioneer times.

The replica blacksmith shop and a surprise find — a wild hog trap.

Since it was very dark inside the blacksmith shop, and we could barely make out any of the details of what was stored there, we focused on the wild hog trap instead.  Wild hogs are considered “invaders to the circle of life” here.  They’re not endemic to the area.  European wild hogs were introduced into a private hunting preserve in North Carolina in 1912.  As one might expect, some of them escaped.  Prolific breeders that they are, they quickly formed wild populations throughout the GSMNP.

So what, one might ask; there are other wildlife populations in the park.  Well, the problem is that they are destructive to the natural ecosystem and they compete with native species for food.  Hence … the traps.  They are part of the feral hog management program implemented by the NPS to keep the non-native hog population in check and reduce the damage they cause.

The wild hog trap and information about why feral hogs are unwelcome in the park.

Having spent nearly 2½ hours in the Cable Mill area, it was time to move on to the remaining heritage sites on the loop, but that’s for part III of my missive.