100 Year Old Cabin Donated to Heritage Center

The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center in Townsend, TN has been gifted with a 100 year old log cabin, which has stood for over a century on property owned by Wilma Maples, also owner of the Gatlinburg Inn. It will be used for educational purposes on the new Center’s site.

Originally built by James Andrew Cardwell for his wife and 10 children, the 19th century cabin was dismantled log by log and stone by stone by Freddie Haun and Neil Atkins, general contractors, who tagged and numbered each piece as it came down before its transfer to the Townsend site for rebuilding. Both men are enjoying the “rebirth” of the cabin, and Haun noted that, “It goes up exactly like it went down.” A few of the bottom logs of the cabin had rotted, but in keeping with the age of the cabin, they were replaced with logs that had come from other historic structures.

Bob Patterson, director of the center and a career administrator at museums and historical centers is excited about Heritage Center’s opening which is scheduled for the fall of this year. To date, over 200 artifacts and exhibits have been acquired and Bob is ready to get the public’s reaction to the total property. In addition to the Cardwell cabin, the center will house nine other structures including two cantilever barns, a smokehouse, a non-working outhouse, a wheelwright shop, a sawmill, a gristmill and finally, the original Montvale Station: a stage stop, post office and Civil War troop terminal that witnessed much history in its former location on Montvale Road.

The Heritage Center will play host to many children with summer camps, Holiday camps and special events focused on indigenous arts, music, dance and storytelling. Classes will also be held on site for teaching some of the mountain arts of weaving, making corn husk dolls, and carving, and an amphitheater will provide a venue for the performance arts of music, dance and storytelling.