At
the beginning of the year Peggy and I had done a hike up Gregory Bald from
Cades Cove. This is a common route, except that we had ridden our mountain
bikes from Cades Cove to the trailhead. This time Jonathan, Peggy, and I were looking to
do a similar hybrid bike/hike trip and targeted the old Bunker Hill Fire tower
site.
The Bunker Hill Tower and cabin in 1941 from Open Parks.
At
that time the spur road to Bunker Hill was still shown on park maps. The spur
starts from the gravel Parson Branch Road, the one way road connecting Cades
Cove to US 129 (Aka, the tail of the dragon). Parson Branch Road is prone to
washouts from rainstorms, and can be closed for years at a time before the NPS
is able to reconstruct it. Sometimes the road is closed to vehicles but remains
open to hikers and bikers. We decided to take advantage of one of these windows.
We
rode from the entry to the paved Cades Cove Loop Road around the north side of
the loop for 5.5 miles to Cable Mill. Here we turned off onto the gravel Forge
Creek Road, and pedaled another 2.2 miles to the Gregory Ridge Trailhead, where
the gravel Parsons Branch Road begins. December is as quiet as the Cove gets,
and we must have had an uneventful ride as I made no notes for this part of the
trip.
Parson
Branch is steeper, and rougher than Forge Creek (hence its susceptibility to
flooding), and gave us our first real climbing of the ride. But even though it was closed to vehicles, we
found it in reasonably good shape for biking. The bank was eroded away in one
spot, and there were other areas near the start where cobles had been washed
into the road, but a good 4WD driver could have driven it easily.
In
1.3 miles we came to an open gate that marked the start of the tower road to
Bunker Hill. We started in on the bikes, but the tower road quickly became too
rough and overgrown for riding. We didn’t know how long the tower had been
closed, but obviously long enough for trees to start growing! The tower was
probably abandoned in the mid-1970s when the park service switched to areal
fire spotting, and was torn down in the mid-1980s when liability from the
abandoned and unmaintained towers became a concern. The road to Bunker Hill is
shown as a trail on the 1931 park map, and as a road to the tower on the 1949
map. The access road and tower are both shown on the latest USGS Quad.
After
a half mile we gave up trying to ride and walked the last ~1.8 miles to the
tower site. The tower road was visible, and it was an obvious and easy winter
walk. At the tower site we could see the footings, some old car batteries, and
an antenna, but there was no view. A 2011 MS thesis on Smokies Towers from
Clemson University indicates that the tower was built in 1941 by the CCC. The
60 foot metal tower had an accompanying cabin that was still standing in 1968.
On
our return we noted that much of the south side of Bunker Hill Lead had burned
relatively recently. Once back on the bikes it was an easy ride under cold
clear skies back to the cars. I thought this was a trip worth repeating, but
have subsequently only been back twice to the tower site, both times on off
trail hikes coming up from US 129.
On
11-18-07 with Jean, Claudia, Clyde, and Nan we climbed off trail up Tabcat
Creek to the tower and back. The batteries and footers on Bunker Hill were
still in place, along with a few scraps of metal.
On
11-20-11 Jean, Claudia, and I hiked the off trail Grassy Flats-Revenue Road
Loop. At the tower site we still saw the batteries, this time with some sort of
stand and some PVC piping. We walked some of the Bunker Hill Road down to the
south end of a “V” where the Revenue Road started, and the tower road was well overgrown
by then! 
Jean and I at the Bunker Hill Tower site in 2011.
