Museum of Appalachia

We've passed it a bajillion times, on the expressway, I-75 less than 20 miles north of Knoxville: The Museum of Appalachia. Billboards advertise it, but they don't do it justice.

This time, on our return drive from Gatlinburg last Saturday, we decided to stop. Glad we did.

It's a 60-acre village of buildings, animals, displays, etc., containing jail cells, leather shop, blacksmith and wheelwright shops, smokehouse, corn mill, broom and rope house, schoolhouse, loom house, privy, granary, sawmill, and more. Some of our favorite parts:

Dr. Andy Osborne's Medicine House, in the Appalachian Hall of Fame:

A chair made entirely of horsehoes, also in the hall of fame:

The many peacocks on the grounds, and the cantilevered barn in the background:

The Arnwine cabin, built in Eastern Tennessee sometime around 1800 on Clinch River:

Irwin's Chapel, a one-room log church which was built around 1840 near the community of Hamburg in the mountainous county of Madison, North Carolina:

The dugout benches on the porch of the Peters Homestead House (where a couple musicians also serenaded us for a few moments):

The Big Tater Valley Schoolhouse, moved to the museum from nearby Big Tater Valley on Bull Run Creek between Union and Grainger Counties:

And, though there is much, much more I could mention, the underground dairy, used to store milk and other perishables in the days before refrigerators...or even ice boxes:



All in all, just a fabulous way to spend a couple hours in a fascinating journey back in time and back into the hills. I recommend it highly.