Ben Anderson photo
Albright Grove via Maddron Bald Trail
Many people may not realize that when Congress authorized Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1926, a whopping 85 percent of the 400,000 acres originally proposed for the park were owned by industrial logging companies.
Their objective was to take as many trees as possible as quickly as possible, leaving denuded landscapes in their wake. As a result, the vast majority of timber from the lower and mid elevations of the Smokies’ unruly terrain was logged. Most of what had been spared was in higher elevations that were considerably more difficult to reach.
The frenzied logging of the early 20th century makes Albright Grove, situated near U.S. 321 between the Cosby and Greenbrier entrances to the park, even more of a treasure. Once owned but never logged by Champion Fibre Co., the cove-hardwood grove harbors a variety of majestic old-growth trees well worth the pleasant, moderate 7-mile hike required to see them.
Alas, perhaps the most difficult aspect of the trek to Albright Grove is finding the trailhead for Maddron Bald Trail, which you hike for about 3 miles before reaching the ¾-mile Albright Grove Loop Trail. To reach the trailhead, you turn off U.S. 321 onto Baxter Road just west of a KOA campground. The road swings around to the right onto Laurel Springs Road before ending at a small parking area where Maddron Bald Trail begins less than a mile from the highway.
A couple of nomenclature notes: Maddron Bald is named for a 19th-century Tennessean, the Rev. Lawson Maddron, who lived near the bald. Albright Grove, in contrast, is named for a native Californian named Horace Albright who never lived anywhere near the grove or the Great Smoky Mountains but who became a great advocate for creating more eastern national parks.
Why name the area for Albright? Perhaps a better question would be, why not name it for him? The first assistant director of the National Park Service, Albright served as its second director from 1929 to 1933, during a period of intense negotiations for critical land acquisitions that helped form the Smokies park. He also is generally credited with shooting down an ill-conceived plan to construct a road along the entire crest of the Smokies—a much longer route than the 7-mile-long skyway that today runs from Newfound Gap to the southern flank of Clingmans Dome. The predominant wilderness character of the Appalachian Trail, as it tracks about 70 miles through the Smokies, would have been lost forever had the road been built.
Even after he left the NPS to become a captain of commerce, Albright opposed an equally dubious proposal to create a manmade lake in Cades Cove. So yes, an old-growth grove in the Smokies named for him seems eminently appropriate.
Maddron Bald Trail—its lower section, at least—is another abiding example of Civilian Conservation Corps handiwork of the 1930s. It’s a well-constructed, well-graded route that remains in good condition and easy to hike as far as Albright Grove, though there’s always the possibility of encountering a large fallen tree or two along the way.
As you head up the trail past a gate, you may spot a couple of private residences to your left, just outside the park boundary. You then come to a tiny 19th-century former home in a glade to your right, less than 3/4 mile up the trail. Outside the short front doorway, a park-service sign informs that this is the Willis Baxter Cabin, constructed of chestnut before the devastating 20th-century blight. The sign also notes that the one-room cabin, comprising fewer than 300 square feet of living space, was built about 1889—coincidentally the same year construction began on the 175,000-square-foot, 255-room Biltmore House in Asheville. Literally hundreds of Baxter cabins could fit inside the mammoth French Renaissance–style chateau that took six years to complete.
A half-mile or so farther up the trail, you come to an expansive trail intersection. To your left is Gabes Mountain Trail; to your right, Old Settlers Trail, which snakes its way for nearly 16 miles to Greenbrier Cove. As for Maddron Bald Trail, it continues straight ahead. Although the trail narrows in a few places above the intersection, it’s still wide enough for a couple of hikers to walk abreast.
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Ben Anderson photo
Albright Grove via Maddron Bald Trail
A poplar in Albright Grove displays an impressive tree hollow.
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Ben Anderson photo
Albright Grove via Maddron Bald Trail
The Indian Camp footbridge features a solidly split log and solid handrail.
After hiking another 1½ miles or so up the trail, you reach the first major stream crossing of the day, as Maddron Bald Trail reaches churning Indian Camp Creek. Fortunately, the footbridge spanning the creek is quite sturdy, featuring a solid split log and an intact handrail all the way across. It’s also part of a lovely stream scene that might lure you to linger for a while.
After a brief ascent you reach the trail’s first junction with Albright Grove Loop Trail. But I recommend continuing up Maddron Bald Trail, veering to the left from here, to pick up the loop trail at its upper end in another 1/3 mile. Doing so gives you a preview of the grove and its stately sentinels before you enter the loop trail, which meanders between Dunn and Indian Camp creeks at an elevation of about 3,200 feet.
The grove, in a word, is magnificent—a tree hugger’s paradise. You walk and stand among giants here, in an old-growth forest that includes enormous yellow poplars, maples, silverbells, Fraser magnolias and a few large Eastern hemlocks that have not yet succumbed to the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid. The biggest of the big is a yellow poplar with a circumference exceeding 25 feet and a height easily surpassing 100.
As you amble through the grove, you might have the sense of being in an outdoor cathedral; it’s truly a place of wonder in these mountains. All too soon, you reach the loop’s lower junction with Maddron Bald Trail, where you turn left to return to its trailhead and the small parking area.
Albright Grove endures today as a relatively small but inspiring pocket of old-growth forest, as well as an apt tribute to a man who helped shape the park we revere today. Go there if you can—any time of year.
About the author: Ben Anderson is author of Smokies Chronicle: A Year of Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (blairpub.com).
- Trails: Maddron Bald, Albright Grove Loop
- Trailhead: Maddron Bald trailhead on Laurel Springs Road near U.S. 321 and Cosby, Tennessee
- Length: 7.5 miles
- Difficulty: Moderately strenuous