Boones Creek Historical Trust to expand performance barn
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The Boones Creek Historical Trust (BCHT) held a press conference on Tuesday to discuss an expansion that will triple the size of the current performance barn.
In 2023, the BCHT received a $750,000 grant from the state of Tennessee. Funds from the grant will help expand the Opry venue and create a museum featuring parts of the Bashor-Denny Mill, which was built on the banks of Knob Creek sometime between 1832 and 1840.
The Bashor-Denny Mill was added to the trust when its owner, William Barrett, asked if the essence of the mill could be dismantled and saved.
“It’s a very expensive project, but we feel it’s worth it,” Jack Oates with the BCHT said. “We’re going to take the materials and reuse them and display them in the new barn being built over at the Boones Creek Opry.”
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Oates said the parts on display in the new building at the Boones Creek Opry will serve as a living museum.
“We have photographed and documented all the working parts of the interior of the mill, and we’re going to take those parts over and display them in the new building that’s being constructed at the Boone’s Creek Opry over on Hale’s Chapel Road,” Oates said. “It’ll be kind of like a living museum, living mill museum.”
A 1980 federal application to place the mill on the National Register of Historic Places puts the construction date at 1832. It described the architecture as simple in style, with no elaborate designs, saying it represented “the functionalism typical of nineteenth century industries of this region.”
That application, found here, states that Henry Bashor bought 17 acres from the Charles Duncan heirs in 1829 and that documents reveal the mill in operation by 1832.
The dismantling of the mill and moving parts to the new building could take several months, according to Oates.
For more information on the BCHT, click here.
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