This article first appeared in Sightline, an annual newsletter that addresses critical environmental and resource issues in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The publication is sponsored by Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Great Smoky Mountains Association and was written and produced by the University of Tennessee’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center.

The Energy, Environment and Resources Center at the University of Tennessee is one of the nation’s oldest university-based multidisciplinary research units devoted to environmental issues. The center finds real-world solutions to problems related to the environment, energy, economic development, and technology. Visit the EERC Web site at eerc.ra.utk.edu.

The full Sightline publication can be accessed at http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/Sightline.html.

Over the centuries, different groups of people from the Cherokee Indians to Scots-Irish and English settlers have made their homes in the area encompassed by Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The more than 90 nationally recognized historic structures still marking that existence offer a glimpse into those past lives, particularly those of early Southern Appalachian farming families.

The largest concentration of these structures is located in the 6,800-acre valley making up Cades Cove and includes a collection of log cabins, barns, churches, grist mills, and various outbuildings, all of which are open for viewing and many for entering, says Bob Shubert, head of the GSMNP preservation crew.

Other heavy concentrations are located along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail and behind the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, with the rest scattered throughout the park. Most of the structures are roughly 100 years old — some much older.

Recognizing the value of these historic places, Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. Under this law, the Park Service is responsible for preserving and protecting historic and archeological sites, structures, and artifacts of national significance associated with major themes of American history. The law also requires the Park Service to develop educational programs that provide the public with information about these places.

“Just as we’re mandated to preserve and protect the Park’s plants and wildlife, we’re also required to preserve and protect its cultural and historical resources,” explains Kent Cave, the GSMNP’s interpretive media branch chief.

In-kind replacements

The Park Service executes that mission by using traditional techniques, tools, and materials as much as possible, which the law also stipulates. Specially trained in the craft of historical preservation, Park Service staff use a wide variety of antique tools and more-modern replicas of the old tools, Shubert notes. Some of the modern tools, such as chisels, broad axes, and hatchets, are in the same shape and form as the old tools but are made of newer, sturdier materials.

Of course, going back “in kind” sometimes presents challenges and ultimately isn’t always possible, points out David Chapman, the Park’s historian. For example, many of the historic cabins were built out of chestnut logs, which no longer exist due to the blight that wiped them out by the mid-1900s.

“Secretary of Interior standards call for replacement in kind if you replace an architectural feature, but since chestnuts no longer exist, we typically use chestnut oaks instead,” Chapman explains. “It’s not technically a replacement in kind, but through the compliance process, historic preservation offices in Tennessee and North Carolina have determined that, although replacement of chestnut with chestnut oak does have an effect, it’s not adverse.”

Annual building inspections help Shubert’s small crew of four prioritize what needs the most attention, and, generally, they undertake between four and five major projects a year. This work typically involves tasks that range from replacing broken windows and rotted porch floors to restorations where a structure is completely rebuilt, as was done earlier this past year with the wooden flume carrying water to Mingus Mill at Oconaluftee.

One of the more challenging projects they’ve taken on to date, according to Shubert, involved restoring the Mount Cammerer fire tower, which was built out of stone and wood by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The structure is situated a quarter mile off the Appalachian Trail in the northern end of the Park, and the five-mile climb to its open perch is steep. Consequently, the Park Service had to contract a helicopter to fly in the materials for the job, and Shubert and his crew were camped out up there for several weeks as they gave the tower its facelift, including a new roof, flooring, windows, and wrap-around catwalk.

Another major project centered around the Cook Cabin in the Little Cataloochee Valley, the remains of which were torn down due to serious disrepair and stored in a barn, Shubert notes. “We went in and rebuilt it from scratch, using part of the old structure, on its original site.”

Most, but not all, of the structures are situated on their original sites, Shubert says. And “that’s been a criticism of some purists who believe they all should have remained in their original location,” he says. For instance, many of the buildings that make up the Becky Cable homestead and grist mill in Cades Cove, as well as the farmstead at Oconaluftee, were moved there some years ago to simulate a typical farm.

These were saved in large measure by the park’s landscape architect, Charlie Grossman, during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. If not for “Junkman” Charlie’s efforts to move them, many of these buildings might have been neglected in their more remote original locations.

“I’m not sure there were that many outbuildings originally, but it gave tourists the opportunity to see all those buildings in one place, and now they’ve kind of grown in there to the point where it wouldn’t look natural anymore if one of the buildings were removed,” Shubert says.

At the time, the Park Service staff was taking its cue from outdoor museums in Europe, Shubert explains, but they wouldn’t follow the same process today. Instead, a log house, known as the Alex Cole cabin, which the Park Service moved to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail in the early 1980s, was erected on an old homesite to replace the cabin that had originally stood there.

The fully restored Cook cabin, completed in the summer of 1999 and situated on its original site, incorporates new as well as original timbers.

“We’re not sure what happened to the original cabin, whether it burned down or what, but we had good documentation of what was there,” Shubert says. And the one that replaced it was similar to the original and was moved from the Sugarlands area where it had been located off the beaten path and out of sight for most visitors.

Telling the whole story

Equally important to the historic preservation process is using these structures to educate visitors by bringing stories to life about the people who lived in them.

“Just showing these old log structures gives visitors somewhat of a false impression, because what’s there isn’t a true representation of life as it really was,” Cave points out. “We’re constantly trying to address that misperception via other means of interpretation — through literature, the publications we have, the interpretive talks and walks that our rangers conduct in the campgrounds, and even the hayrides through Cades Cove.”

At the time GSMNP was established back in the 1930s, many more structures existed in the park, but their value wasn’t readily apparent, he explains. Consequently, only some of the oldest looking structures, like the John Oliver cabin in Cades Cove representing the pioneer frontier period, were preserved, and the more modern ones were removed.

“If you think about it, you can understand what happened,” Cave reasons. Back then, a two-story, Victorian-style home built in 1900 would likely have had the same value to the people establishing the Park as a 1960s brick rancher would for us today.

“We would have liked to have had a few more of them to be able to show — from the earliest inhabitants, including the Native Americans, to the present day — how people lived and how things changed in these mountains,” Cave says.

What has been preserved instead is a type of pioneer primitivism, and so “we have to place this great collection of log cabins in context with the rest of our interpretive program to properly showcase them for the visitor,” Cave says. “What the visitor doesn’t see is the rest of the story. We have to fill in the gaps with our programs and publications.”

Important friends

With tight federal budgets, the biggest challenge the Park Service faces in its historical preservation efforts, however, is “coming up with enough funding to adequately carry out our stewardship responsibilities,” Chapman says. And help from outside groups such as Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Great Smoky Mountains Association has been and remains key to this endeavor.

Fortunately, historic preservation is an issue that resonates with a lot of folks, making it easier to raise funds for these types of projects than others, says Jim Hart, executive director of Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “I like to get projects like this; we all do because it gives us something specific and tangible that people can relate to that sort of ties them to the history of an area.”

For more information, contact Bob Shubert, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, Tenn., 37738, call 865.436.1289, or email bob_shubert@nps.gov.