With the exception of a back porch, the cabin remains largely as it was when the Bales family lived in here in the early 1900s. Both halves of the cabin have their own chimney.

The space between the two halves was relatively cool in summer and warm in winter, making it attractive to dogs. Dog-trot cabins, which are fairly common throughout the southeastern U.S., typically involve two adjacent cabins with roughly 10 feet (3.0 m) in between, but with one continuous roof. The Bales cabin was a double cabin with a passageway known as a 'dog trot' in between. The other 40 acres (160,000 m 2) were mostly wooded, which the Bales family used for construction material and firewood. Ephraim, Jim Bales' older brother, farmed some 30 acres (120,000 m 2) of his 70-acre (280,000 m 2) plot. Just below the Jim Bales place is the farm of Ephraim and Minerva Bales. Bales' corn crib and barn remain, however. The Alex Cole Cabin, being more representative of the pioneer days of Appalachia, was moved to the farm from the Sugarlands. When the Park Service gained control of the land in the 1930s, the frame house was torn down. As Bales got older, the farm passed on to other families, one of which erected a modern frame house on the land (known as the 'fancy house') where they entertained visitors. He married Emma Ogle, a granddaughter of Gilbert Ogle, whose farm was located just above the Bales Place. Jim, born James Wesley Bales in 1869, lived here for much of his life. The first historic stop along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is the Jim Bales Place, a farm which Jim Bales inherited from his father, Caleb. In 1976, the Roaring Fork Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1900, the community had matured into a mountain hamlet with its own school, church, general store, and tub mills. Īround 1850, the residents of Roaring Fork constructed a crude road connecting the area to White Oak Flats (this old road is now a stop along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail). Former homesteads can usually be identified by the preponderance of young tuliptrees (rather than the more common hemlock or oak), as tuliptrees are the quickest to reclaim previously cultivated land. Uppermost on Roaring Fork, near where the stream absorbs Surry Creek, were farms owned by the Clabo family, Gilbert Ogle, and Jasper Mellinger. Caleb's daughter, Martha, married Alfred Reagan in 1879. Ephraim Bales married a great-granddaughter of Richard Reagan, Minerva, in 1889. Caleb Bales married one of Richard Reagan's granddaughters, Elizabeth, in 1861.

Īs the Bales and Reagan families lived on adjoining lands, it's no surprise that they intermarried. Caleb's sons Jim Bales (1869–1939) and Ephraim Bales (1867–1936) would spend most of their lives on Roaring Fork farming land inherited from their father. Caleb Bales (1839–1913), apparently a son or nephew of the first Bales to settle on Roaring Fork, owned a farm just south of the Reagan lands. The Bales family settled in the upper section of Roaring Fork sometime in the 1830s or earlier. Jim Bales Place, with barn (right), corn crib (left), and the Alex Cole Cabin (center) Farmers who lived at Roaring Fork, the Sugarlands, and Greenbrier were continually moving and stacking these rocks, creating the characteristic rock walls that still criss-cross these areas today. This process has left the streambed of Roaring Fork and the flats in the Roaring Fork valley virtually covered with sandstone rocks of all sizes. Over thousands of years, erosional forces have carried boulders composed of this sandstone down from boulder fields located higher up along the mountain ridges. Roaring Fork Sandstone is found throughout the mid-level elevations of the northern Smokies, and is especially common in Greenbrier to the east and the Sugarlands to the west. The Roaring Fork valley is underlain by Precambrian sandstone of the Ocoee Supergroup, a rock formation formed from ancient ocean sediments nearly a billion years ago. The mouth of Roaring Fork is located at the northern end of Gatlinburg, where it empties into the West Fork of the Little Pigeon River. From its source, Roaring Fork drops 2,500 feet (760 m) over just two miles (3.2 km), spilling over Grotto Falls and absorbing Surry Creek before steadying in a narrow valley between Mount Winnesoka and Piney Mountain. The highest of these springs, known as Basin Spring, provides the water source for LeConte Lodge. The source of Roaring Fork is located nearly 5,000 feet (1,500 m) up along the northern slopes of Mount Le Conte, where several small springs converge. Sandstone rocks litter the ground at the Jim Bales Place

Roaring fork