Brinegar Cabin: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Blue Ridge Parkway - Highlands District, National Park Service

Wheeler, Beth; Hasty, David; Lawliss, Lucy

This CLI, originally published in 2008, was updated in 2022 in order to better reflect existing conditions and fill out previously spare descriptions of key landscape characteristics and features. Observational data gathered in the field, as well as excerpted narrative and graphic data from "Doughton Park and Sections 2A, B and C: Cultural Landscape Report, Blue Ridge Parkway, National Park Service" (The Jaeger Company, 2006) and "Survey and Assessment, Blue Ridge Parkway - Appendix" (Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.. 2016) provided the basis for this update. Brinegar Cabin is located at Milepost 238.5 on the Blue Ridge Parkway (parkway left) in North Carolina. The 2.5‑acre roadside interpretive site, sloping south from the Parkway, features four wooden outbuildings clustered in the southeastern corner of the property. The farmstead includes a parking lot, Cabin, Granary, Springhouse, and a Mission 66 outhouse as well as an interpretive garden, the location of a former orchard, and several small‑scale features. All buildings are sided in wooden clapboards and roofed with wooden shingles. The site is accessed from an asphalt‑paved parking lot to the south of the Parkway. A stone retaining wall and stone curbing (1942) bound the 17‑space lot to the east, while a stone gutter borders the west. The stone wall includes a built‑in drinking fountain on the north end, adjacent to the interpretive garden. The parking lot also serves as trail access for the Cedar Ridge and Bluffs Mountain trails. A picket fence encloses the interpretive garden and flax field west of the Cabin. NPS staff maintains the interpretive garden, which contains (seasonally) buckwheat, flax, sorghum, pole beans, and dipper gourds. An apple orchard to the south of the garden once included 25 to 30 trees, but today is a mown field. The Brinegar Cabin (c.1889), once the home of Martin and Caroline Brinegar, remains an extant log structure with one‑and‑a‑half stories over a stone foundation. The cabin, sheathed in clapboards with two stone chimneys, is used for interpretation of Appalachian life and mountain farming. The original Granary to the west of the Cabin remains intact. The Springhouse is located down slope along the tree line at the south end of the site. The original dry‑laid stone retaining wall (1942) extends from the northwest corner of the building. The same year, stone steps were added to provide access to the outbuilding. An outhouse (1957) for NPS staff was added between the Cabin and Springhouse as part of the Mission 66 initiative. Vegetation at Brinegar Cabin consists of a maintained lawn and field enclosed by a white pine and hickory oak hardwood forest to the east and south. The parking lot bounds the landscape to the west and the Blue Ridge Parkway is directly north. Catawba rhododendrons were planted along the split rail fence near the Granary during the NPS site development and today White ash, White oak, and Black Locust grow around the nineteenth‑century complex. A cleared vista is maintained from the Brinegar parking lot overlooking the former orchard and distant mountains. Brinegar Cabin represents a glimpse into the middle class Appalachian farming/family life from 1885‑1935. The signage at the site includes information on loom weaving, traditional subsistence crops, the regional use of springhouses, and the life and gravesite location of the Brinegar family. Craft demonstrations occur during the summer months and the annual Brinegar Days celebrate the area’s mountain heritage. The period of significance for the Blue Ridge Parkway-Doughton Park landscape is 1933‑1987 and is potentially a National Historic Landmark. The Brinegar Cabin is significant on the state level as an Appalachian farmstead and was listed in the National Register in 1972. The landscape features retain good integrity and remain in good condition.

Brinegar Cabin: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Blue Ridge Parkway - Highlands District, National Park Service

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