Cable Mill: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove Subdistrict, National Park Service

Hasty, David; Wheeler, Beth; Fogelquist, Sara

The Cable Mill is a .9-acre component landscape of the Cades Cove District, part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee. Located west of the Cades Cove Loop Road, the site is accessible by a nonhistoric paved walkway adjacent to the visitor parking area. The Cable Mill landscape is a complex of buildings, all of which except the mill itself have been moved to the site from other homesteads in the cove. The site contains features and structures typical of an overshot mill, in which the water flow strikes the wheel near its top. This includes the mill building, race, flume, waterwheel, dam, and channeled stream. Additionally, the Becky Cable House and a number of outbuildings (corn crib, smokehouse, two barns, blacksmith shop) are sited around the mill. Other historic landscape features include road traces, a sorghum mill, and remnant fields. Along with other sites in the cove, the Cable Mill is a significant resource related to the early settlement and ongoing evolution of a southern Appalachian farming community. The period of significance for the site begins in 1868 when John P. Cable purchased the property, situated near the junction of Forge and Mill Creeks. Following that, Cable steadily expanded his land holdings in the county. The water-powered saw and grist mills that he operated rendered the Cable property a focal point in the community, as mills were one of the most important industries throughout the nineteenth century. The grist mill was necessary to prepare grains for bread-making, and the saw mill contributed to community activities from construction to coffins. In 1876, a two-store frame house, likely the first in the cove, was built upstream from the mill site with lumber sawed at the Cable Mill. The structure would serve as a general store, boarding house, and residence for John’s daughter Becky. After John Cable’s death in 1891, ownership of the mill and property passed to his three children. Becky lived on the property until 1940, nine years after it was acquired by the National Park Service. The period of significance extends to 1942 to include the Park Development Era improvements. The existing landscape character primarily depicts the Park Development Era 1938 master plan and its interpretation of the cove "pioneer" settlement. The Cable Mill was envisioned in the 1938 Proposed Mountain Culture Program as a "domestic and industrial field exhibit" area, consisting of reconstructed and reorganized groups of buildings (Wilburn, Grossman, and Stupka 1938, 20). The mill was in serious disrepair when the NPS gained ownership in the 1930s, and it was restored by Conservation Civilian Corps (CCC) labor in 1935-36. Most of the original mill had to be taken down and rebuilt from salvaged materials, supplemented by newly cut lumber. Only original methods of construction were used in restoration. The original mill was much larger and covered twice the area. There were two other elements of the mill complex that no longer remain: a wheat mill, located in a building a few feet distant from the extant mill, and a sash sawmill powered by a second waterwheel. The Becky Cable House was moved to the site in 1956 without its kitchen ell, back porch, and outbuildings. All the outbuildings that are located around the Becky Cable House were also moved to the site from other farmsteads in an effort to form a “typical” 19th century cove settlement. The fencing is a 1950s undocumented reconstruction. As part of the 1972 Comprehensive Design for Cable Mill (133/41029A), the parking area was expanded and a paved pedestrian walkway, comfort station, and visitor center were added. An open fescue field is maintained around the site. The area south of the Cable Mill is a typical cove hardwood forest of buckeye, maple, hemlock, rhododendron, white pine, tulip poplar, and sycamore.

Cable Mill: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove Subdistrict, National Park Service

Series

Collections