Monteagle Smoke House re-emerges in new venue

Monteagle’s Jim Oliver’s Smoke House re-emerges in new venue

MONTEAGLE, Tenn. — The iconic neon sign for Jim Oliver’s Smoke House called people to dinner atop Monteagle Mountain for six decades, but in a matter of hours on April 27 the roadside mecca was reduced to smoldering rubble and memories.

It could be next spring before the landmark restaurant and trading post begins to rise from the ashes, said J.D. Oliver, the namesake’s son, who has revived a restaurant operation behind the rubble of the former smokehouse in a small venue on the property that was once just a pavilion for outdoor events.

Insurance coverage based on cost estimates from more than two years ago didn’t begin to consider the pandemic-driven spike in construction costs, and many of the antiques, farm equipment, tools and the like can’t be replaced, Oliver said. He estimates the loss was well over $1 million.

But Oliver refused to throw in the towel.

“We have been able to open back up for limited food service by utilizing a food trailer for a kitchen and the covered outdoor pavilion out back of the smokehouse. This outdoor pavilion has been something we’ve used for outdoor functions for groups over the years. We now call it The Smoke House Patio Grill,” he said.

The grill, opened in June, operates three days a week — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — with live music until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Oliver sat at a table in front of a wood stove inside the new venue Friday. Though it was closing in on midday, fog shrouded the mountaintop, something Oliver doesn’t like because travelers sail right past without ever seeing the 20-acre Oliver operation that includes a motel, cabins and trails, all left untouched by last April’s fire.

The grill’s menu is different from the old restaurant because the smokehouse was lost, he said. That means no smoked ribs and brisket, but the Olivers’ highly-favored pulled pork still is available.

People miss the house-made fudge, too. The old smokehouse sold 9 tons of fudge a year, 1 pound at a time, but the equipment to make those gooey pieces of history also was claimed by the fire, Oliver said.

The day the historic eatery met its fate, a fire that started somewhere in the back consumed the 60-year-old centerpiece, while the rest of the Oliver family’s campus was undamaged. The old restaurant was filled with antique furniture, tools, farm equipment and other oddities and the warm smell of the smokehouse seemed to seep from every nook and cranny.

“I stayed all evening and watched everything that we had accumulated over 60 years burn up in a matter of hours.”

— J.D. OLIVER

Oliver learned of the fire mid-afternoon on April 27 from the business’s marketing and music director, Marla Sitten, and when he got to the property black smoke was billowing out the back door as flames began to rage inside, he said. As the fire devoured history, firefighters were forced back by the smoke and heat.

“I stayed all evening and watched everything that we had accumulated over 60 years burn up in a matter of hours,” Oliver said. “It felt like unexpectedly losing a member of the family, and we were totally helpless to save anything.”

Fortunately, the fire was contained and other structures on the property were saved thanks to firefighters and equipment from fire departments in the neighboring Tennessee towns of Winchester, South Pittsburg, Manchester, and in Alabama, Scottsboro and Crow Mountain.

J.D. Oliver and his sister, Betsy, are the owners since their father and smokehouse namesake and founder, Jim, died in 2007. Since then, the Oliver family and its extended “kin” among employees and customers kept the smokehouse chugging along steadily.

The building that burned harks back to 1975 when it was constructed from the ground up, replacing previous versions dating back to 1960, The Bee Hive Drive-In and the Monteagle Diner, according to historical information on the Olivers’ website. Over the years, the family estimates there have been around 20 million visitors to the Oliver family’s eateries, according to the website.

Sitten, who has worked at the smokehouse more than a decade and has deep connections to the music communities in Nashville and Chattanooga, said the new venue with its quaint stage is ripe to become a songwriter’s haven. Since she’s been with the operation, the place has hosted more than 2,500 music events and has even become “a musician’s vacation spot,” she said.

For now, the Patio Grill gives people back a little of what was lost, she said.

“This fire has really touched the hearts of a lot of people,” Sitten said. “It’s like losing a celebrity that everybody loved. It’s not a person but it was something that they had love for.

“People in our area know about it [the fire] but the travelers that have come here for years and years, they may not know about it,” she said, noting people every day find their beloved stop gone.

A family from Cleveland, Tennessee, made that discovery Friday morning.

“We’re shocked,” said Barbara Potter, who was with her daughter, Erin Blankenship, her husband, Greg, and their small children, Will and Kennedy. Potter said some of her family was from the area of Monteagle and nearby Tracy City.

Erin Blankenship said she last visited around 2008 while the children never got to see it.

“We discovered this place when I was in Illinois and we stopped here,” Potter said. “We’re shocked now that it’s gone.”

A couple tables away, sisters Johnnie Caldwell and Roxanna Rice were visiting from Flowery Branch, Georgia, for the first time since the fire. They said their brother, Charlie Knott, had worked at the smokehouse years ago and their families had been very close over the years. It was part of their history.

“I watched it burn [live] on the internet. I cried. This is Monteagle here,” Caldwell said.

Rice said they enjoyed their overnight stay but she was disappointed her morning staple wasn’t available.

“I didn’t get my country ham breakfast,” she lamented but seemed to be enjoying her homecooked lunch.

Meanwhile, Oliver looks ahead with the same undying optimism and work ethic that made his father famous.

“You know, we lost a nostalgic building and a lifetime collection of historic memorabilia in that fire, but no one was hurt and we didn’t lose the love and support of all the families, friends and customers,” he said.

The booming success of nearby event venue, The Caverns — home to PBS’s Bluegrass Underground — along with visitors to South Cumberland State Park, Bigfoot Adventure and Baggenstoss Farm Hunting Preserve, offer promise for the future.

“The smokehouse will be making a comeback and it will continue the 60-plus-year legacy that Jim Oliver started back in 1960 at a little drivein grill called ‘The Bee Hive,’” he said.

That first edition only had six counter stools, a jukebox, a pinball machine “and a big parking lot where people would sit in their cars and blink their lights for service, much like we are doing at the Patio Grill today,” Oliver said.

Stay tuned. His father’s legacy will carry on, Oliver said.