"Fishing Cabin" - Nostalgia of Elkmont

by guest blogger, Elmer Prather

This is the 51st Cobble Hill Puzzle that I have had the pleasure of putting together. I need to have a connection with a puzzle before I spend the time putting it together. I love old cabins and this puzzle filled that bill. The title of this puzzle is Fishing Cabin by Mark Keathley. This is the fourth Mark Keathley puzzle I have put together. The other three were RockyMountain High, Mountain Cascade and Smoky Train.

Mark Keathley's "Fishing Cabin" 1000pc assembled by Elmer Prather

The cabin depicted in the puzzle reminded me of some of the cabins I have visited in Elkmont, a small community in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are many old cabins like the one pictured in the puzzle on the Little River that runs through Elkmont. These cabins were built during the time the Little River Lumber Company was harvesting timber from an area which would later become part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The Little River Lumber Company built narrow gauge railroads deep into the virgin forest to carry the timber from the mountains to the sawmill in Townsend, Tennessee where the timber was stored in a pond beside the mill until it was cut into different sizes of lumber and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee by train. This lumber was then shipped all over the world.

The timber they cut was virgin timber and as such many of the trees were 5 or 6 feet in diameter at their base and were several hundred years old. What a loss for our future generations not to be able to see them still growing. Many of these trees were Chestnut trees. When the Chestnut blight hit the mountains, it destroyed most of the Chestnut trees. The locals used to harvest chestnuts from these trees and sell them. The money they received helped them survive while living in the mountains.

The community of Elkmont was established as a satellite facility for both railroad and lumbering operations and to serve as a base of operations for harvesting the upper watershed of the Little River.  There was a post office, church, hotel, commissary, houses and cabins for management and workers. With rail access now available into the heart of the mountains, the Little River Lumber Company made land available for summer home sites.  Many of these old houses and cabins still exist but had become badly deteriorated.

As a result of efforts by the National Park service to restore some of the community structures, visitors are now allowed to enter some of these restored cabins and houses.

In the late 1930s the Federal Government began purchasing land for what would become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The landowners who refused to sell their land were taken to court and forced to sell. This included all the cabins and houses in Elkmont. In 1939, after they had harvested many thousands of trees from the property, the Little River Lumber Company sold 76,507 acres of deforested land to the Federal Government for the sum of $273,577. This was twice the price they paid for the land.

The railroad tracks were removed in 1939 when the last load of timber was removed from the mountains. The National Park Service took advantage of the railbeds by converting them into roads and hiking trails. The Smoky Mountains National Park was established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited of the 63 National Parks in America. In 2020 12.4 million visitors toured the park. Many of them had the pleasure of visiting the old cabins beside the Little River in Elkmont.