Cades Cove: Wildlife Loop & Cable Mill

Cades Cove is the single most serene destination accessible from Knoxville — a broad mountain valley in the western end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that was settled by European-American families in the early 19th century and preserved as open farmland by the National Park Service after 1943. The result is a 4,500-acre cleared landscape in the center of a national forest, ringed by the forested ridges of the Smokies and populated by white-tailed deer, black bear, wild turkey, and the cove's original horse population. The 11-mile one-way loop road — one-way, so the pace is set — passes three historic churches, John Oliver's original 1820s log cabin, the Cable grist mill, and a series of barns and outbuildings that are maintained but not commercialized. There is nothing to buy and no interpretive pressure; the loop works entirely at the visitor's pace. A picnic on the valley floor at Cable Mill is the midday anchor.