The Old Mill on the Little Pigeon

Right here, on the east bank of the west fork of the Little Pigeon River, stands the oldest thing in Pigeon Forge, the Old Mill. The Love family built this gristmill in eighteen thirty, next to the iron forge that gave the town its name, and against every odd it is still turning. For nearly two centuries the river has pushed a great breastshot wheel, roughly twenty-four feet across, and inside, heavy stones have ground corn and wheat into meal and flour.

During the Civil War the mill's story took a turn worth telling. A later owner, a Union sympathizer, reportedly installed looms on the upper floors to weave cloth for local men who had joined the Union side, and by some accounts a floor served as a rough hospital. When peace returned, the mill kept working.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a generator installed here began lighting homes across the river, giving Pigeon Forge some of its first electricity, though the mill's own history dates that milestone a couple of decades later. Floods tore the wheel away more than once, and each time it was rebuilt. In nineteen seventy-five the Old Mill was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the only structure in the whole town to earn that listing.

Today it anchors a cluster of shops and a restaurant, but the machinery is real, the water is real, and the meal it grinds still goes into the cornbread served next door.