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32 ft waterwheel

Blowing Cave Mill

At the end of the Reconstruction Era Elbert Stephenson Early and his brother William Early relocated to Tennessee from Virginia. The two formed a carpentry business in Sevier County appropriately named "The Early Brothers". Elbert and William are credited with constructing a number of historic structures in Sevier County, which include, Murphy's Chapel, the Nave-Dickey House, the Murphy-Allen House, the Harrisburg Covered Bridge and the Blowing Cave Mill. The mill, which replaced a previous mill "Tub Mill", was completed in the spring or summer of 1880. The mill is located near the head of Flat Creek in the Byrds Cross Roads area of Sevier County, at the foot of English Mountain. The two and a half story frame structure features a raised limestone foundation, a gable roof, and four-over-four wood sash windows. The original wooden waterwheel was replaced with the current 16 ft. Fitz Overshot waterwheel around 1941. The Blowing Cave mill is an excellent example of the flour and corn mills constructed throughout Sevier County in the nineteenth century and is one of the few remaining in Tennessee. Author and historian Wilma Dykeman wrote the following poem:

"The Blowing Cave Mill"

Nature determined the rhythm of life at that place. Stones had been a long time forming, trees had been a long time growing, water had been a long time flowing, before they came together shaped into a wall, into grinding stones, into siding and shingles and a great wheel fed by a long, tight trough gathering the streams clear flow to turn the creaking wheel outside, and inside the heavy stone grinding corn into meal, wheat into flour. Food. They came with their bulging sacks from summer's harvest and waited their turn for the miller's time. Nothing could be hurried. The water flowed, the wheel turned, the millstone ground, flour and meal gathered in the bin. Patiently the farmer's talk gathered:
neighbor's news, twice-told jokes, political denunciations, all grist for this welcome fellowship. Like progress of the seasons or procession of the constellations life in that place turned at its own rhythm.

Virgina