Oconaluftee Visitor Center and Mountain Farm Museum

Just past the Mingus Mill you can pull into the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, the one Smoky Mountain visitor center in North Carolina.  As we're usually staying on the Tennessee side we don't always get to go by, but whenever we do we enjoy our time there.

The Mountain Farm Museum is a unique collection of farm buildings assembled from locations throughout the park. Visitors can explore a log farmhouse, barn, apple house, springhouse, and a working blacksmith shop to get a sense of how families may have lived 100 years ago. Most of the structures were built in the late 19th century and were moved here in the 1950s. The Davis House offers a rare chance to view a log house built from chestnut wood before the chestnut blight decimated the American Chestnut in our forests during the 1930s and early 1940s. The museum is adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.
--from Great Smoky Mountains NP website

The visitor center does a great job of explaining the history of the area, starting with American Indians but also including the first non-Cherokee settlers that arrived in the 1790s.

You also learn something about how the farms would have been laid out.

In addition you can learn a bit about the park's history.

In a way though the best exhibits though are outside in the Farm Museum for these are actual buildings gathered from all over the park to tell the history of the area.

No pets are permitted in the area but thankfully kids are welcomed.

We first entered an area of heirloom apple trees protected by modern elk-proof fencing.

Apples were a staple for many mountain families and would often have been stored in a building like this apple house to protect them from the elements.

This is a sorghum mill used to press out the cane and extract sorghum.

You can see how it worked via this picture that I took at Dollywood a couple days before where a modern mill was being run as a demonstration.

This is a furnace that was used for refining the sorghum.

This was one of the houses that you could enter.

The meathouse would protect a valuable source of protein that was usually salted or smoked to allow it to last without refrigeration.

Here is an interior view of the meathouse.

If you're in the area and the weather is decent you really should stop by the Mountain Farm Museum and stroll around.  Admission is of course free since there is no entrance free for Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

This video tour (that I found via the park service page) will give you more of a preview before you come.

You can also see more of my photos in my Oconoluftee Visitor Center and Mountain Farm Museum albums.

~Matt