Rich Mountain Road - Cades Cove - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Anytime during the year, only Laurel Creek Road provides access to to Cades Cove on the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National  Park. During winter, that is also the only way out of the cove. However, two other roads provide an exit from the cove during part of the year. Both of these roads are one-way with a gravel surface and are not suitable for oversized vehicles. Parsons Branch Road is open from late May until late November and leaves the cove to the south and US 129. Rich Mountain Road is open from early April until late November and leaves the cove to the north and Townsend.

Rich Mountain Road starts west of Hyatt Lane near the Cades Cove Missionary Baptist Church on the one-way, paved Cades Cove Loop Road. The seven mile road climbs to Rich Mountain Gap and the park boundary. Beyond the park, the two-way and paved road is known as Old Cades Cove Road. We drove out Rich Mountain Road on our late October 2022 visit to Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Typical road conditions

Cades Cove from the first overlook

Another view of Cades Cove

Cades Cove Methodist Church with Cobb Ridge on the far side of the valley

A closer view of the church and cemetery

Another view of Cades Cove and Cobb Ridge from the first overlook

View from the second overlook

A closer view of the backbone of the Smokies

The third overlook

View from the third overlook of ridges outside the park

A closer view

There is no entrance fee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, a parking fee will be levied beginning March 1, 2023. The fee will be $5 for a daily tag, $15 for a seven-day tag, and $40 for an annual tag.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park website is https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.

Cades Cove - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

In late October 2022, we returned to one of our favorite places in the world, Cades Cove, to see the autumn colors. The Cades Cove Loop Road is a one-way eleven-mile paved lane that encircles the valley known as Cades Cove.

We arrived too late in the day to hike the Abrams Falls Trail, but we did stop at the trailhead and observed Abrams Creek for a few moments.

John Oliver Cabin below Double Mountain and Cerulean Knob

Gregory Ridge

Pole Knob and Cobb Ridge

Another view of Cobb Ridge

Thunderhead Mountain (center) behind Anthony Ridge (left) and Leadbetter Ridge (right)

Tater Ridge

Mowed fields

Another view of Cobb Ridge

Another view of Anthony Ridge and Leadbetter Ridge

Red leaves and brown fields frame Cobb Ridge

Abrams Falls Trailhead kiosk

Pedestrian bridge over Abrams Creek

View upstream from the bridge

Low flow below the bridge

A small ripple

Still water above the bridge

Looking back at the bridge from the Wet Bottom Trail

View downstream from the bridge

Abrams Creek from the Abrams Falls Trail

Deer grazing in a field

There is no entrance fee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, a parking fee will be levied beginning March 1, 2023. The fee will be $5 for a daily tag, $15 for a seven-day tag, and $40 for an annual tag.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park website is https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.

Gravel Roads - Cades Cove - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Besides the paved 11-mile scenic loop drive, there are several gravel roads in Cades Cove that also provide scenic views. The roads include two-way Sparks Lane, Hyatt Lane, and Forge Cree Road, as well as one-way roads leaving the park such as Parsons Branch Road and Rich Mountain Road. Here are views from a few of them. We visited Cades Cove in mid-August 2022.

Mill Creek near the Whitehead Place on Forge Creek Road

View from Hyatt Lane

Another view from Hyatt Lane

Methodist Church in Cades Cove from Rich Mountain Road

Closer view of the Methodist Church

View of Horseshoe Ridge across Cades Cove 

View of the Foothills mostly outside the park from Rich Mountain Road

There is no entrance fee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, a parking fee will be levied beginning March 1, 2023. The fee will be $5 for a daily tag, $15 for a seven-day tag, and $40 for an annual tag.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park website is https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.

Henry Whitehead Place - Cades Cove - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Henry Whitehead Place is located on the gravel Forge Creek Road in the Cades Cove area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It currently consists of two cabins and a smokehouse. There once was a barn onsite as well. The surrounding forest was likely row crop and pasture land. A small garden was probably located somewhere near the cabins. The story of the cabins is both a sad and a happy one. The smaller, older, rougher cabin in the rear was hastily built by Dave, George, and Zack Shields in 1881 to provide shelter for their sister Matilda Shields Gregory after her husband, Ebeneezer Gregory, abandoned her and their son. In 1882, Matilda acquired the title to 50 acres of land surrounding her cabin from her brothers. In 1887, she married Henry Whitehead, a local carpenter. Sometime during the period 1895 to 1898, he built the larger story-and-a-half cabin immediately in front of the old cabin utilizing the newest construction techniques including square log walls instead of round logs that required chinking and a brick chimney instead of a stone one. The park is left with examples of the worst and best construction techniques of the day in one compact site.

North

West

Another view from the west

West and south

Smokehouse

East

There is no entrance fee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, a parking fee will be levied beginning March 1, 2023. The fee will be $5 for a daily tag, $15 for a seven-day tag, and $40 for an annual tag.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park website is https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.

Cable Mill - Cades Cove - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

John P. Cable built this overshot grist mill in the late 1860s. It is the only mill remaining of several mills operated in Cades Cove before the national park was created. The mill is located near the Cades Cove Visitor Center about halfway around the eleven-mile one-way loop road that circles the cove.

An overshot mill utilizes a flume to redirect water from the stream to the mill. In this case, a long ditch leads to a 225-foot-long flume to bring the water from Mill Creek to a point above the 11-foot wheel and pour it into "buckets" built into the wheel. The water in the wheel causes a weight imbalance, forcing the wheel to turn. A series of gears, originally built of apple wood but later rebuilt with metal, is used to spin the runner stone just a fraction of an inch above the bed stone. By varying the distance between the two stones, the miller could create various grades of his product from cracked corn to corn meal to corn flour. Corn was the primary crop ground here, although some wheat may also have been ground. The miller was typically paid a one-eighth portion of the cornmeal that was produced.

Some of the blueprints created for the 2018 reconstruction of the water wheel

Flume and water wheel

View down the flume to the mill

Cades Cove Visitor Center

There is no entrance fee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. However, a parking fee will be levied beginning March 1, 2023. The fee will be $5 for a daily tag, $15 for a seven-day tag, and $40 for an annual tag.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park website is https://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm.