Historic Buildings of the Smokies

When Great Smoky Mountains National Park was authorized in 1934, 6,600 people — farmers, millers, teachers, merchants, ministers — lived within the proposed boundary. Most were bought out and removed; a handful of the most historically important structures were preserved in place. Today those cabins, mills, churches, barns, and schoolhouses form one of the most complete living-history collections in the eastern United States.

This index covers every preserved building we have researched: the log cabins, corn mills, white-clapboard churches, and wooden outbuildings of Cades Cove (Oliver Cabin, Tipton Place, Elijah Oliver Place, the Primitive Baptist and Methodist churches, John Cable Mill); the painted farmhouses of Cataloochee (Palmer Chapel, Caldwell House, Beech Grove School); the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail's Ephraim Bales and Alfred Reagan homesteads; the Mountain Farm Museum near Oconaluftee; the haunting Wonderland Hotel ruins at Elkmont; and outliers like the Walker Sisters' cabin, Mingus Mill, and the Little Greenbrier School.

Each page tells the short story of the family who built it, when, what happened to them, and what survives. Many buildings are freely enterable (respect the no-furniture, no-climbing rules) and all are on legacy loops that remain open year-round, subject to road closures. Park-It-Forward parking tags apply at every stop.