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Location: Great Smoky Mountains National Park Cherokee, NC |
As soon as we finished our visit to Clingman's Dome we headed back to the campground. But it was still early in the afternoon and we still had some energy left so we decided to drive just past the campground and sneak in a visit to Mingus Mill. This mill was built in 1886 and what sets in apart from the other mills in the area is that it used a water powered turbine to operate all of the machinery inside of the mill and not the typical water wheel. The mill primarily was used to grind corn into flour, which they sell inside of the mill.
Sadly we didn't get to see this mill in operation because it suffered a broken part. The mill person told us they were able to get the part fixed but lacked the funds to get it installed. We have been hearing a lot of stories like that lately, NO FUNDS to do anything. I didn't mention it before but when we visited the iconic Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway last month it too was not fully operational. The flume which carries the water down the mountain and up to the water wheel was missing several large sections. Rather than restore it, a pump was installed to transport water directly to the top of wheel to make it operate, bypassing the flume altogether.
While there is no entrance fee charged to get into Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they do get more than 12 million visitors every year. That is more visitors than the next three most visited National Parks combined. You may recognize their names, Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone. Great Smoky Mountains National Park has ten developed campgrounds with a combined total of more than a 1000 campsites, they have to generate a positive income. The park recorded more than 250,000 paid nights of camping in 2014 and I imagine those numbers are only going up, considering how hard it was to get a reservation in any of the three campgrounds we stayed at. And let's not forget the four big visitor centers and their gift shops. There must be some surplus of money somewhere to properly maintain this park!
Anyway, enough of that! We still had a very interesting visit to Mingus Mill and here are the photos we took during our visit, enjoy!
MINGUS MILL
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