News · June 9, 2026
Rickwood Caverns Opens New Entrance Near the Old Reid’s Gap Site
A new road and playground at Rickwood Caverns, and a 110-year-old railroad story resurfacing at the same spot.
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Logan’s General Store: A Highway 160 Landmark Since 1958
Logan’s General Store opened on Highway 160 in 1958, the same year aerial photographs still show the land that would […]
The Founding of Smoke Rise
Before it was a subdivision, it was farmland and forest, visible in a 1958 aerial photo of the ridge east […]
I-65 and the Roads of Smoke Rise
Construction on Interstate 65 began in 1958, and the highway opened through this stretch of Blount County on April 1, […]
Tracing It With LIDAR
Much of what’s known about Reid’s Gap and the roads that predate Smoke Rise comes from LIDAR - laser-based elevation […]
Mont Eyrie Orchards & the Fight With the Railroad
Beginning around 1903, Edward J. Bryan assembled roughly 2,600 acres around Reid’s Gap into Mont Eyrie Orchards - “an apt […]
The 1908 Tornado at Reid’s Gap
On April 24, 1908, an F4 tornado tore a 105-mile path from near Dora in Walker County northeast to Sylvania […]
The Bee Line Highway & Prohibition Moonshine
The push for a highway along this route didn’t start with the rail-bed conversion - it started two years earlier, […]
Building the L&N Through the Gap
The Civil War largely bypassed this part of Blount County - the closest action was a Union cavalry raid that […]
The Conspiracy to Rob the Train
In mid-July 1878, a stranger calling himself Sherwood approached W.C. Reid - a Blount County man living near Reid’s Gap, […]
Oil Fever at Reid’s Gap
A well drilled at Reid’s Gap around 1891 had sat plugged and abandoned for a decade - the original prospectors […]