Jaime Trotter

The little-known 457-acre McNabb Mines in Marion County’s Shakerag community, the Cleveland Southern Railway Depot and the Cleveland to Charleston Concrete Highway in Charleston are among seven Tennessee sites just added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Area preservations and archeologists are delighted.

“It is recognition at a national level (showing) that it is important,” said Lawrence Alexander, head of Alexander Archaeological Consultants, the company that surveyed the Shakerag community’s coal mining remains and history.

Staff Photo by D. Patrick Harding -- The remains of several stone structures at the McNabb mining site, also known as Shakerag, still stand along River Canyon Road. Shown is what is believed to be a small school and church.

Jaime Trotter, who researched McNabb Mines for the firm, said she hopes this is a new beginning for the forgotten town.

“There’s no other listed historic resource in Tennessee that is this intact — as far as having the footprint of an entire coal mining community. It’s pretty rare, and that makes it pretty significant,” she said.

The Cleveland Southern Railway Depot is equally interesting, according to Paul Archambault, historic preservation planner for the Southeast Tennessee Development District. Mr. Archambault made the application for Cleveland’s 1910 Craftsman-style railway depot.

“It’s part of the past. It’s a sense of place,” he said recently, describing the depot’s central ticket office, which had a waiting room entrance at the north end for whites and a “colored” waiting room on the south side.

Also receiving designation to the National Register of Historic Places is a one-mile section of Bradley County’s Cleveland to Charleston Concrete Highway.

The highway section, between Market and Water streets in Charleston, was finished in 1927 and remains unchanged. The concrete roadway is an example of 20th Century road building and of early public-private cooperation when local civic groups known as “Good Roads” associations worked to connect farms to markets and build tourism roads.

The associations were active long before the establishment of state transportation departments, according to Meg Lockhart, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Historical Commission and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

Other sites on the list include:

n Bell Witch Cave, in Adams, Tenn., north of Nashville. The cave is famous for the legend of Kate, the witch who said she came to haunt the John Bell family to kill Mr. Bell and stop his daughter, Betsy, from marrying a neighbor boy. The cabin and nearby cave became a popular spot for tourists and thrill seekers as early as 1817 — the year Kate was said to begin appearing to the family and neighbors. Now about 17,000 visitors come to the cave each year.

n Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Railroad Station and Depot in Johnson City. The brick building was erected in 1908 in two sections — a one-story freight depot and a two-story passenger station. The depot is the only remaining intact train station/depot still standing in a city that was developed largely due to the railroad.

n Thomas Woodard Jr. Farm in Cedar Hill, Tenn. Once a tobacco farm and whiskey distillery, the site includes a 1838 brick house and turn-of-the-century barns, a family cemetery and a cave. The property illustrates the evolution of a farm in Robertson County during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

n West End Church of Christ Silver Point near Cookeville. As an advocate of African-American education, the Rev. George Phillip Bowser began the West End Church of Christ in the community of Silver Point in 1909. The church building was erected in 1915 and was used as both a school and church for the rural black community. According to the nomination, “From its inception, the church and former school have provided a place of identity and congregation for the African-American community of Silver Point and western Putnam County, a community that was isolated by geography and culture.”

The designations offer opportunities for preservation and interpretation grants, researchers said.

In the Shakerag community’s McNabb Mines, Mr. Alexander said the hope is to preserve a remaining building arch and some of the stonework, provide interpretive signs and make the site and the history available to the public.

“It’s location, location, location,” he said of the site’s possibilities. “The Tennessee River Gorge is sitting right there along with the Cumberland Plateau and the woods (of Prentice Cooper State Forest).”

Mr. Archambault said the Cleveland Southern Railway Depot, owned by the Southeast Tennessee Human Resources Agency, also may be in line for a preservation grant that would pay 80 percent of what could be a $500,000 restoration cost to make the depot a Cleveland bus transit station.

“It will be part of Cleveland’s downtown revitalization plan,” he said recently. “It’s just a few steps from the Five Points Museum.”

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