Center will highlight Appalachian history

The project’s first phase will include a 15,000-square-foot building containing classrooms, an auditorium and galleries for interactive exhibits on Indian and pioneer culture and transportation.

The second phase calls for a 500-seat amphitheater and outdoor exhibits, including a log home, cantilever barn and wheelwright shop.

Bob Patterson, executive director of the proposed center, said the first exhibits could be on display within a year.

It is important to “make sure what we open with, that people will be impressed with it,” he said.

Already, the center has formed partnerships with the neighboring Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, Friends of the Smokies, the University of Tennessee, UT’s McClung Museum, the East Tennessee Historical Society, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Smokies’ Tremont Institute.

More than 1,200 boxes of artifacts are being made available to the center, covering more than 10,000 years of human habitation in the region, Patterson said.

In addition, the National Park Service is making as many as 15,000 artifacts that have been removed from the park available to the center for exhibit. They include furniture, clothes and guns.

The center will be built on 3 acres just outside the Townsend city limits near the entrance to the national park.

Planners estimate the first phase will cost about $3.1 million. They are encouraged that a fund-raising gala in May raised $55,000 toward that effort.

In addition, $1 million for the center was contained in an appropraitions bill that passed the U.S. House several weeks ago. The fate of the appropriation is pending negotiations with U.S. Senate conferees.

Meanwhile, Richard Way, president of the center’s board of directors, said he has secured four log cabins that will be dismantled and moved to the center grounds for preservation and display.

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Information from: The Knoxville News Sentinel, http://www.knoxnews.com