page_title: The Sugarlands
section_title: Early pioneers
hierarchical_section_title: The Sugarlands / History / Early pioneers
caption_attribution_description: The John Ownby Cabin in the Sugarlands, GSMNP, in East Tennessee. This cabin is located along the short interpretive trail behind the Sugarlands Visitor Center.
context_page_description: The Sugarlands is a valley in the north-central Great Smoky Mountains, located
  in the Southeastern United States. Formerly home to a string of small Appalachian
  communities, the valley is now the location of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
  headquarters and the Sugarlands Visitor Center. Lying just south of Gatlinburg, the
  Sugarlands is one of the park's most popular access points.
  The Sugarlands area stretches roughly from Grapeyard Ridge and Roaring Fork in the east to the slopes of Sugarland Mountain to the west. Mount Le Conte rises 5,000 feet above the valley to the south and southeast. The West Fork of the Little Pigeon River, its source high in the mountains, slices through the Sugarlands, draining much of the valley.
  When the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the early 19th century, they named the valley after the many sugar maple trees growing in the area at the time. Syrup was made from the sap in these trees and used as a sweetener in the days before the availability of cane sugar. While these trees were cleared by the early settlers, the sugar maple is still common throughout the park.
context_section_description: The first European settlers arrived in the area around 1800, settling in the vicinity of what would eventually become Gatlinburg.  Richard Reagan and William "Black Bill" Ogle — children of these early settlers — farmed land along Mill Creek (now LeConte Creek) in the eastern half
  of the Sugarlands.  William Trentham would homestead in the Fighting Creek area, where the Sugarlands Visitor Center now stands.  In subsequent decades, three communities developed in the Sugarlands valley— the Forks-of-the-River and Fighting Creek communities in the vicinity of what is now the Sugarlands Visitor Center, and the Sugarlands community proper, which lay further to the south, between the two "Quiet Walkways" opposite the Huskey Gap Trail and the Chimney picnic area.  Most of the inhabitants still living in the Sugarlands when the park was formed were descended from these early settlers.
  For much of the 19th Century, Sugarlanders lived in log cabins.  The typical mountain cabin consisted of one room, 16' × 20', constructed of notched logs and puncheon floors.  A chimney — usually made of slate and clay — rose along one wall.  A lone window was on the wall opposite the chimney.  Around 1900, modern frame houses slowly started replacing the log cabins.
  A standard farm in the Sugarlands consisted of the cabin or house and a small vegetable garden, all of which was surrounded by a paling fence, and several outbuildings.  A smokehouse and woodshed would likely be found near the kitchen, and a springhouse would straddle a nearby spring.  Other likely outbuildings included barns, corn cribs (often affixed to the barns), chicken coops, and toolsheds.  There were at least five gristmills in the Sugarlands, the largest belonging to Caleb Trentham.  The tubwheel-powered mill of Noah "Bud" Ogle still stands today at Cherokee Orchard.
caption: John Ownby Cabin, built in 1860
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