Although Caughron's house no longer stands, remnants of pioneer history dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries do remain. At several places along the loop drive, you can stop to visit some of these early structures, including three small churches (each with a graveyard filled with well-weathered headstones), numerous log homes, a working gristmill and even a few barns, smokehouses, corn cribs and other assorted outbuildings.

At about the halfway point on the loop, you'll find an excellent visitor's center surrounded by several historic buildings, most of which were moved to their present location from other parts of Cades Cove. The gristmill (the only building in this grouping that remains on its original site) still operates, grinding corn from April to October. You can buy the mill's cornmeal in the visitor's center.

In addition to the loop road, Cades Cove contains a picnic area, a 159-site campground (one of the larger of the park's 10 campgrounds, and the only one open year- round) and stables (open from mid-March through late- November). The stables offer trail rides, carriage rides and ranger-guided hayrides, perfect opportunities for viewing wildlife in the early morning and at day's end.

The wide-open fields are ideal for spotting white- tailed deer, which sometimes appear by the hundreds near dawn and at dusk, and often black bear, which generally live in the forested areas but amble into the fields from time to time. Wild turkey, fox, bobcats, coyotes, river otters and groundhogs also make their home in Cades Cove.

NEWFOUND GAP

Newfound Gap is the point where the main road across the park, appropriately named Newfound Gap Road, crosses the Tennessee-North Carolina state line. A marker here shows you where the line is, so those who get a kick out of doing so can stand astride it and technically be in two states at once.

It's the lowest drivable pass through the park, at an elevation of 5,046 feet. Even so, at almost a mile high, the view from here is grand indeed -- and the temperature can be 10 degrees cooler than at lower elevations in the park.

This is the spot where, in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a speech in front of 10,000 people to formally dedicate the park. Rockefeller Memorial, the grand stone patio where he stood as he spoke, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and still provides a nice vantage point, although the views over the mountains from the edge of the parking lot are equally as breathtaking.

The platform was named for John Rockefeller Jr., who honored his mother when he donated the final $5 million needed to acquire land for the national park. This was more of a headache than most people realize because, unlike the national parks in the West that were carved from land already owned by the government, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created from a patchwork of more than 6,000 parcels of privately held land.

The Appalachian Trail, which winds 2,150 miles from Georgia to Maine, passes right in front of the memorial, following the state line for the better part of about 70 miles. Day hikers often strike off in either direction just for the fun of hiking part of this famous footpath.

CLINGMANS DOME

If you head west on the Appalachian Trail from here, you'll reach the highest point on the trail, Clingmans Dome, in seven miles. But you don't have to hike to get there. Clingmans Dome Road, a spur road starting just south of the Newfound Gap parking lot, will take you within a half mile of the peak, except in winter when the road is closed. (If you go then, you'll have to hike the whole way.)

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