The Old Mill General Store: A Gathering Place Then and Now

The General Store at the Heart of the Community

The roots of the first general stores date back to the earliest pioneering days. Born out of necessity as trading posts and mercantile shops, customers could purchase in person or by ordering everything they needed to start a homestead, from farming supplies to pantry staples. Even furniture, wagons, and coffins could be ordered from traveling salesmen, referred to as “drummers”, who would stop by to set up in-store with miniature scale models of things like a cast iron stove. Customers could see what they were ordering, and they had lots of catalogs to peruse. They might hold demonstrations of a new sewing machine, kitchen gadget, or musical instrument. Farming and housework were hard, laborious tasks, so anything that could make them easier or provide a little entertainment at the end of a long, hard day was worth spending a little money on.

These became the hub of a community, a gathering spot, where everyone could catch up on the news of the day. Often, the post office was set up inside, and trading and bartering were encouraged. If you raised chickens, you could trade them for a bag of cornmeal ground by another neighbor who had traded it for some horseshoes someone else had made. The general store became the middleman, connecting customers, thus connecting the community, and currency was not just the bills in your wallet, but what you could offer as value. 

A Changing Way of Life

Our Old Mill General Store, though, came along in a time when other stores and mercantiles of their kind were disappearing. By the 1920s and 30s, the automobile meant customers could get to the grocery store chains that began popping up, the pharmacy instead of buying the snake oil some salesman was peddling, and department stores for clothing instead of buying cloth to make their own. But the Old Mill General Store timed it just right. 

From Grain Storage to General Store

Built in 1830, the gristmill had been established for about 120 years when the General Store opened inside the addition that had once stored grain, and prior to that housed a sawmill. The floors you walk on today were built sometime after the flood of 1920. The original was built circa 1900 and was a 2-story add-on. The first floor was about level with the spoke of the 24-foot breast wheel of the mill, so when it flooded, it’s likely that it received some damage. It was rebuilt as a single-level building and raised several feet, hopefully above future rising waters. 

Tourism Comes to the Smokies

When the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was dedicated by President Roosevelt in 1940, the country began to explore East Tennessee. The Simmons/Stout family, who bought the gristmill in the 1930s, converted that grain storage room into a store as tourism was beginning to boom. Local farming was still a main source of employment for outlying areas around Pigeon Forge, so farmers were still bringing their grains in to be ground. But as tourism picked up, the workforce was called out of the fields and onto the new parkway, which was built just yards away from The Old Mill, on the other side of the river. This meant that the mill could be seen by the thousands of visitors as they headed toward the park. Soon, the 50-pound bags of corn the miller slung around were replaced with 5-pound bags of cornmeal and grits that visitors would carry home as a souvenir of their time in the mountains. 

A New Chapter at The Old Mill

We purchased the mill and general store in 1995, a couple of years after we built our first restaurant next door. The gathering spot for farmers on the porch of the mill turned into a place where music filled the air, and the smell of the Miller’s Fried Cornbread would stop tourists in their tracks. 

Still a Gathering Place

Now nostalgic at first for many folks, a visit to the Old Mill General Store is still an opportunity to take home some stone-ground cornmeal and grits. The once bartered homemade and handcrafted goods are now items you can find made all around The Old Mill. Jams and jellies come from the kitchen across the street in the Farmhouse Kitchen. Soups you enjoy in either of our two restaurants are available as a mix you can take home and make. Books by local authors or candles by local crafters are available for purchase. And in keeping with the mercantile of yesteryear, The Old Mill General Store remains the gathering place when folks come to town.