BRC Click to view more photos, or visit BlueRidgeCountry.com/Mabry WORKING THE WHEEL PROBLEM SOLVING THE FINISHED PRODUCT Workers had to turn the wheel a few feet at a time as they rebuilt it. As wood dried out, some had to be soaked in the pond to regain its size. The newly crafted wheel mirrors its image in the rejuvenated pond. Craftsmen from the parkway's Historic Preservation Shop in Blowing Rock, N.C. scavenged the ideal wood for the project - an ancient white oak tree that had blown over several years earlier in the E.B. Jeffress Park - and milled it to specifications at a local lumberyard in February. Parkway Plant Ecologist Chris Ulrey measured growth rings of the massive white oak and concluded it was at least 400 years old and quite possibly more than 500 - meaning that the tree could have been a seedling when Christopher Columbus first came to the New World. Work began in the snows and sleets of March and concluded in May. Journalist Jack Betts made more than 1,200 photographs as the Parkway's Jack Trivett and Steve Marnie, backed by other Parkway staff, worked their magic to bring the waterwheel back to life. JULY/AUGUST 2014 | 41http://www.BlueRidgeCountry.com/Mabry