Apple House (Mountain Farm Museum)

Apples were one of the Smokies' most important crops. Families grew dozens of varieties and used them fresh, dried, cooked into butter and pressed into cider. The apple house kept the fresh ones, set in bins and layers of straw, cool and dark through the winter. Root vegetables such as potatoes and turnips were stored the same way. Unlike a springhouse, which kept dairy cold in running water, an apple house worked by shade and thick walls.

The Apple House is one of several outbuildings at the Mountain Farm Museum, a collection of historic log buildings moved to a site beside the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in the 1950s. They come from farms across the park, and together they re-create a working farmstead. The park's own description is that the museum includes a self-guiding tour booklet keyed to numbered posts.

• Where: beside the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, 1194 Newfound Gap Road, Cherokee, North Carolina.
• Access: the grounds are open in daylight and free. Outbuildings like this are viewed from outside.
• Time to allow: 45 minutes to walk the whole farmstead.
• Parking: the visitor center lot. A parking tag is required for stops over 15 minutes.
• Nearby: elk graze in the meadow beside the museum, often at dawn and dusk. Mingus Mill, a mile or so north, is closed until further notice.

The exact year this building was constructed is not recorded in the park's public material, so treat "late 1800s" as a general guide. Read the numbered posts and the booklet for the specifics. See the NPS Oconaluftee page for current information.