Puckett Cabin on the Blue Ridge Parkway

After stopping at overlooks that have massive parking lots but not a view in site, it is ironic to come to Puckett Cabin, a stop where there is something to see, but parking for maybe a half dozen passenger vehicles. The cabin is not open, but you can walk around and take photos.

Small parking area at Puckett Cabin on the Blue Ridge Parkway

The story of Puckett Cabin is also a story filled with irony, and when put into a modern perspective, something to think about. The cabin was owned by Orelena Hawks Puckett, who lived to be 102 years old. At age 50 she became a midwife, delivering more than 1,000 babies and supposedly never having lost one of them. She helped deliver her last baby in 1939, the year she died. Ironically, she had twenty-four children of her own, none of which lived past infancy. Can you imagine that happening today? After two dead children she would have been investigated, let alone twenty-four. Makes you wonder if “Aunt” Orelena was the nice lady of lore or a psychopath who killed her own children and sought forgiveness by delivering others. What a cynic the modern world has made me. (Note: This is just a theory. There is no evidence that Aunt Orelena was anything but a righteous person.)

Orelena Puckett at age 102 with the last child she helped deliver

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