CLEVELAND, Tenn. -- The Flint Springs community is trying to save an 1830s-era log cabin before termites and kudzu consume it.
The cabin was built in Hamilton County during the era of the Trail of Tears. In the mid-20th century it was moved to Bradley County and reassembled, log by log, on a site authenticated as the last home of Cherokee Chief John Ross before he likewise moved to Oklahoma.
"It is said that they assembled the logs to look like the Ross cabin, which burned down several years ago," said Carol Crabtree, Red Clay Historic Park manager.
A local family donated property to the county on which the cabin sits, which is not far from Red Clay, the last Cherokee council site before the Trail of Tears.
An effort to have the cabin listed as a stop on the National Trail of Tears also has been launched.
Jim Richmond, a member of the Flint Springs Ruritan Club and a professional surveyor, said the community is rallying to save the cabin.
About seven or eight of the original logs have been destroyed by termites and will have to be replaced with new ones, hewn just as they would have been 160 years ago. The site has been authenticated by Middle Tennessee State University's Center for Historic Preservation.
"It is a historic site," Mr. Richmond said.
The Flint Springs Ruritan Club has secured some estimates on the cost to restore the cabin.
When the Brown family donated the land, the county formed a three-member committee to oversee the site.
But that was forgotten over the years.
Michael Willis said, as a county employee, he was given the task a decade ago to inventory all county property. That's when he discovered the county actually owns this small 50-foot-by-50-foot site and the cabin.
It's time to put another group into place to secure funds and restore the cabin, said County Commissioner Lisa Stanbery.
For that reason, she has placed on the commission's next agenda, June 7, a vote to create a new Flint Springs Cabin Oversight Committee.
"We are aware of the springs and wetlands around the cabin, and we will be very very sensitive to the nature of the spring," she said. The county already has a drainage easement but will send plans anyway to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation field office in Chattanooga, she said, "just so they will be aware of what we are doing."