Freels Bend Cabin

Edward Freels, whose family came from North Carolina in the 1790s, is credited with the oldest room, built around 1810 with a loft reached by ladder; a second room and the shared limestone chimney were added in 1844. The family farmed several hundred acres of corn and cattle running down to the Clinch River. The government bought the farmland in 1942 for the Manhattan Project, and most homes in the area's four small farming communities were demolished. The cabin survived as part of a picnic area, narrowly escaped the lake, and is the last 19th-century dwelling in Oak Ridge.

What the plaque says

Freels Bend Cabin The Freels Bend Cabin was one of the earliest cabins built in Anderson County. Construction on the cabin was begun in 1810 by Edward Freels. The cabin was a double-pen, hewn-log structure. Techniques in its construction are representative of those used in the area in the early 19th century. It is Oak Ridge's only remaining residence that was built in that century.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Museum of Science and Energy — 4.5 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 11 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Historic Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary — 17 mi
  The coal-mining prison opened in 1896 after the Coal Creek War ended convict leasing, where James Earl Ray escaped in 1977, now a tourist site and distillery.
• Blount Mansion — 17 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.

More markers nearby

• Oak Ridge — 2.8 mi
• The Scarboro Community — 5.1 mi
• X-10 Plant — 5.2 mi
• David Glasgow Farragut — 6.0 mi