page_title: Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center
section_title: Collections
hierarchical_section_title: Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center / Collections
caption_attribution_description: English: Mississippian period (1000–1600 A.D.) jar on display at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend, Tennessee, United States.
context_page_description: The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center is a private non-profit museum located in Townsend, Tennessee, United States, near the city's entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Its mission is to preserve the heritage and culture of the inhabitants of the Great Smoky Mountains, including both the region's Native American inhabitants and the pioneers and residents of the region's Appalachian communities. The center was organized in the early 2000s, and officially opened in February 2006.
  The center houses over 17,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor exhibits. The outdoor area includes several structures from around the region, including a log cabin, two cantilever barns, an AME Zion chapel, a logging town "setoff" house, a sawmill, and a still once operated by a local moonshiner. The indoor gallery displays tools, furniture and musical instruments used in the mountain region, as well as a sizable collection of Cherokee and other Native American artifacts, some dating to the Archaic period.
context_section_description: Along with its outdoor exhibits, the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center has two indoor galleries: the main gallery and the transportation gallery.  Half of the main gallery is dedicated to the region's Native American history, and the other to the region's pioneer and mountaineer periods.  The center's transportation gallery interprets the region's evolving types of transportation, from wagons to railroads and automobiles.  The center also includes a 100-seat auditorium and a 500-seat amphitheater.
  Along with the Cardwell Cabin, Wilders Chapel, and Williams still, the outdoor section consists of nearly a dozen structures from around the region, many of which are decorated with furniture, tools, and other items from their respective periods.  The Montvale Station represents a stagecoach stop that once stood in the nearby late-19th century resort of Montvale Springs.  The center is home to two cantilever barns, a type of barn commonly used by farmers in East Tennessee, as well as a smokehouse and granary, which were once common on rural farms.  The "setoff" house on display is a type of home commonly found in late-19th century logging towns, such as nearby Tremont and Elkmont.
  The main gallery's Native American section contains artifacts dating from the Archaic (8000–2000 B.C.), Woodland (1000 B.C. – 1000 A.D.), and Mississippian (1000–1600 A.D.) periods, as well as from the historic Cherokee period.  Many of the artifacts on display were uncovered during the Townsend Archaeological Project, which was conducted just up the road from 1999 to 2001.  The pioneer gallery includes late-19th and early-20th century items commonly used in rural areas around the region, including a bedroom suite, and tools such as a horseshoeing box and a banjo once played by a resident of Cades Cove.
  The Proffitt's Gallery, at the end of the center's main gallery, hosts traveling and temporary exhibits.  These have included an exhibit showcasing items once sold by the Alcoa-based department store, Proffitt's, a collection of Civil War memorabilia to honor the war's sesquicentennial, an exhibition of old toys, and an exhibit dedicated to Great Smoky Mountains National Park promoters and conservationists, Horace Kephart and Harvey Broome.
caption: Mississippian-period jar on display in the main gallery
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