The Alex Cole Cabin is a historic house in Sevier County,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

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, along Roaring Fork within the

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in the southeastern United States, southeast, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline o ...

. The last remaining building of the community of Sugarlands, it was built by Albert Alexander "Alex" Cole (1870–1958). The cabin was originally located at , across the Little Pigeon River from what is now the "Quiet Walkway" opposite the Huskey Gap Trailhead, just off Newfound Gap Road.Paul Gordon, , 17 April 1974. Retrieved: 2009-09-21. After being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s, the cabin was moved to the Jim Bales Place along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail (the last owners of the Jim Bales Place lived in a relatively modern frame house). Alex Cole was one of the most industrious residents of the Sugarlands. In the early 1900s, Cole and his sons made a weekly trek across Sugarland Mountain via what is now the Huskey Gap Trail to Elkmont, where they worked for the Little River Lumber Company. As tourism increased in the mountains in the 1920s, Cole began offering his services as a mountain guide, especially for tourists wanting to hike to the summit of Mount Le Conte. Historian Vic Weals wrote that Cole's "considerable knowledge of his wilderness" made him "one of the more sought-after native guides."Vic Weals, ''The Last Train to Elkmont'' (Knoxville: Olden Press, 1993), p. 26. The cabin is a single-pen one-story cabin measuring approximately by . The walls are built of

hewn In woodworking, hewing is the process of converting a trunk (botany), log from its rounded natural form into lumber (timber) with more or less flat surfaces using primarily an axe. It is an ancient method, and before the advent the sawmills, ...

logs with dovetail notching. Fieldstone and loose rock comprise the cabin's foundation, and the cabin's

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

d roof is covered with hand-split shingles. The interior contains a sawn board floor and a loft, and is accessed by a sawn board door. The chimney is built of masonry rubble.

References

Gatlinburg, Tennessee Houses in Sevier County, Tennessee Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee Log cabins in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Sevier County, Tennessee National Register of Historic Places in Great Smoky Mountains National Park Log buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee {{SevierCountyTN-NRHP-stub