Take a Pink Jeep Tour into History

Story and photos
by Kathleen Walls

Great Smoky Mountain National Park is a place you could spend days or even weeks exploring. It is America’s most visited national park. Cades Cove is one of the most popular places in the park, but there is another lesser-known section where history still lives.

Pink Jeep Tour

I took a Pink Jeep Tours recently and our driver, Tim Church, took us through Cherokee Orchard road to the beautiful, winding, Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. It’s a 5.5-mile, one-way, loop road that follows the Roaring Fork Mountain Stream through one of the park’s old-growth forests.

As we drove Cherokee Orchard Road, there are scenic overlooks where we could see Anakeesta Mountain Adventure Park, the Gatlinburg Space Needle, and other modern attractions. Then you move into the past with several historic structures from the early 1900s.

Ogles Cabin

The Ogles were one of the first families to settle this area first called White Oak Flats. Noah (Bud) Ogles, a descendant of that family, built a cabin and farmed these 400 acres, beginning around 1879. His cabin is interesting as it was originally about half size and he later added a second section, which shows a different roof structure. There are still traces of his rock walls, cornfields, and mill. Walking along the rocky trail, you wonder how anyone could farm such steep rugged land.

Bales’ Farmstead

We roamed the Ephraim and Minerva Bales’ farmstead on Roaring Fork Trail, where they raised nine children in a tiny log cabin. They owned 72 acres and farmed only 30. The rest remained was too rocky and remained wooded. The Bales family lived here from about 1890 to 1930, when the government’s purchase of the park bought them out.

Their cabin was built a “dog-trot” style where two rooms sit side by side with covered space between and a single roof connecting them. The dog trot serves as a family area during warm or rainy weather, and a cooling device before the days of air condition. Air flowed through the dog-trot, keeping the two sections cool in the summer. The larger cabin was the living area, and the other side served as a kitchen.

Old Ely Mill

Near the end of the park, we explored Old Ely Mill. It was built in 1920 by Andrew Jefferson Ely, a former Yale Law graduate and practicing lawyer, who grew bored with civilization after his wife died. He built the mill and a shop on 25 acres here and called it The Water Wheel Craft Shop. He had strong opinions on many things and preached against the evils of store-bought food, milk, cheese, alcohol, coffee, tea, and many other foods. It seems he was somewhat the equivalent of a modern-day vegan. He never hesitated to push his way on anyone he spoke to.

Over time, he added barns for livestock, sheds, chicken houses, a mill, and a blacksmith shop. He built a caretaker’s cottage and brought in a family to tend to everyday tasks. The buildings were completed in the 1940s and had grown to almost twenty buildings.

Today, the mill is a wonderful place to find local crafts, antiques, and honey in season. There are two over-night rental cabins, and they host small weddings. Ely’s Mill is one of the few remaining pieces of “Old Gatlinburg” remaining active. It’s still run by the original family.

By the time you finish the tour, you will feel you are back in the early 1900s except for the very comfortable 21 century pink jeep.