Blacksmith Shop (Mountain Farm Museum)

The smith's forge was the center of the shop: a hearth fed by a hand bellows, an anvil, and tongs and hammers hung on the wall. He made nails and hinges, mended chains, sharpened plow points and shod horses and mules. In a community with few cash purchases, the smith was paid in labor, crops or goods, and the job often went to the most skilled man on a farm. Many of the Smokies' farms had a shop like this, and a few families ran one as a trade.

The Blacksmith Shop is one of the outbuildings gathered at the Mountain Farm Museum by the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, among the Davis House, the barn, the springhouse and several cribs. The collection was assembled from different parts of the park, so each building comes with its own origin story, which the museum's numbered posts and booklet explain.

• Where: at the Mountain Farm Museum, beside the Oconaluftee Visitor Center on Newfound Gap Road, just north of Cherokee.
• Access: viewed from outside; the grounds are free and open in daylight.
• Time to allow: 45 to 60 minutes for the whole farmstead.
• Parking: the visitor center lot; a parking tag is required for stops over 15 minutes.
• Wildlife: elk often graze in the field beside the museum at dawn and dusk. Keep your distance.

For the best sense of the place, walk the full farm first, then return to the shop and think about what you would have to make or mend for a year. The Cable Mill area in Cades Cove has a working-style blacksmith shop of its own, and the Tipton Place has another. See the Oconaluftee page for current information.