Cades Cove’s Cable Mill: Volunteer miller takes gristmill visitors back in time

by Dick Byrd, published in The Daily Times 6/12/2011

Why is there a gristmill in Cades Cove? Here’s what volunteer miller Gary Haaby says:
“You’d bring me your corn and your wheat and I’d turn them into flour so you could make your bread. No grocery stores in the good ol’ days. In summertime when it’s hot weather, I’d be seeing you down here two or three times a month. You just mill it as you need it. No refrigerator, freezer or Ziploc bags.”

One of Blount County’s most visited, most beloved, and most beautiful things is the John P. Cable Gristmill in Cades Cove. Well over 1 million people visit Cades Cove when enjoying The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s the Park’s most popular area.
Cable Mill sits about halfway around the one-way loop road that runs through the cove, part of a homestead fashioned from the mill, the nearby wood frame house, barn and other outbuildings.
Haaby is a retired school teacher. He lives in Townsend and volunteers as one of the millers in the cove where Cable Mill operates from April through October each year.
He works for the Great Smoky Mountains  Association, which was called the Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association when it was formed in 1953. They are the folks who provide volunteers and who operate the stores in the cove, Sugarlands Visitor Center, the Welcome Center on The Spur and elsewhere in the Park.
This is how Haaby talks about the mill:
“Back a hundred years ago you’d see six or seven of these mills. There were about 700 people living in the cove. The mill has been here for 143 years. It usually ran on Saturdays. And the miller’s gonna get paid. I’m gonna take an eighth of your corn and a sixth of your wheat. And you’ve got to tell me what you want to do with it. I can do it fine, coarse, cracked — whatever you want. In summertime you’d want it coarser because it keeps better that way.
“You’d bring your shelled corn in to me. I don’t shell corn. That’s something your kids’ll be doing at home. That’s why we had kids. I’m gonna drop it in the hopper. It’s all gravity fed. All mills are going to be tall buildings because they run on gravity.
“Inside there is a millstone called a runner stone. And below that is called a bed stone and that’s stationary. The corn is cut between the stones, which don’t touch. Corn goes between the stones and falls into grooves. Some of that corn is sticking up out of the grooves so the top stone shears it off. And the grooves get shallower toward the edges so the farther out it goes the finer it cuts.”
The miller says every four or five years the stones come out and are sharpened. These stones have been on the mill for its entire 143-year life. Outside are more millstones. They came from nearby mills.
Cable Mill is the only mill out of six or seven that were once in the cove. It was rebuilt by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930’s. Now it operates for all to see.

Crazy questions

One visitor a few weeks ago, Gary Keasling from Illinois, said he has been bringing his family to The Smokies since 1998 but this was his first look at Cable Mill.
“I’ve been a welder for 23 years and to go back a hundred and 43 years ... the people were a lot more clever and resourceful than we give them credit,” he said.
Miller Haaby says he gets a lot of crazy questions. “They think the mill is a water treatment facility. The think it’s a way to clean water. But that’s fine. That’s why we’re here. Most folks that come in want to know how it works. But I try to make sure they know what it’s for before they know how it works because that’s the key to it.”

Milled lumber

He also points out that besides grinding corn and wheat, the mill was used to mill lumber. Haaby says the timbers in the nearby farmhouse were cut at Cable Mill.
The booklet, “Gristmills of the Smokies,” published by the association, states that the “Cable Mill’s power comes from Mill Creek, although Cable dug a connecting channel to Forge Creek so that when water levels were low he could tap both streams. A low dam channels water toward the head of the millrace where the first of several watergates allows the miller to regular the flow of the water. The last watergate, on the flume, can be operated by a long lever from within the mill.”
The big waterwheel is 11 feet tall and 5 feet wide. It is a classic overshot wheel used on fast mountain streams. Undershot wheels, used on slow flat water streams, turned as water flowed past the bottom of the wheel. Overshot wheels are much more energy efficient, so even 143 years ago Mr. Cable was thinking “green.”
Asked how he eats his cornmeal, Haaby says, “My wife uses it to make corn bread. She fries stuff. I had a heart attack and so I don’t eat a lot of that stuff. But she does. Right in front of me, she’ll eat it.”