SIGHTLINE
WINTER/SPRING 2002
Vol. 3 No. 1
Cove's Changing Landscape
Crunching Numbers, Counting Bugs
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Editor: David Brill; Assistant Editor: Constance Griffith; Writers: Kris Christen, Lisa Byerley Gary, Elise LeQuire, Dennis McCarthy, and Becky Nichols. Graphic Designer: Lisa Byerley Gary.
SIGHTLINE is published on behalf of
Great Smoky Mountains National
Park
by the
Energy, Environment and Resources
Center (EERC)
at the
University of Tennessee.
EERC conducts research designed to promote real-world solutions to problems in the fields of energy, environment, technology, and economic development.
For additional information, write EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-4251, or visit our Web site at http://eerc.ra.utk.edu.
SIGHTLINE is sponsored by:
and
Photos courtesy of National Park Service
SIGHTLINE
SUMMER 2001
Vol. 2 No. 1
AIR
The Acid Test
HUMAN INTERACTION
Back to the Future
WILDLIFE
Deviant Behavior
WATER
Aquatic Insects on the Frontline
INVASIONS
Big Hogs, Big Problems
VEGETATION
Managing the Land
Becky Cable made clothing for her family in pre-Park Cades Cove.
The Cove's Changing Landscape
Cades Cove's preserved houses and barns allow visitors to follow footprints from centuries past.
BY ELISE LeQUIRE
When white settlers first laid eyes on Cades Cove in 1818, they saw "that the cove was completely enclosed by high mountains and was covered by dense forest broken only by the swampy area at the lower end," writes historian Durwood Dunn in his Cades Cove: The Life and Death of an Appalachian Community. Situated in a fertile valley at a crossroads of Cherokee trails linking settlements in Georgia, South and North Carolina, and the lower river plains of East Tennessee, Cades Cove was still relatively remote and sheltered from the Indian wars and smallpox epidemics that had ravaged the region for nearly a century. And as the first European settlers, John and Lucretia Oliver, knew well: It was still Cherokee territory.
"There is evidence that Cades Cove was a locus of Cherokee settlement during the early 18th century," says Brett Riggs, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. These Cherokees were not seasonal hunters who made little impact on the land. Instead, they raised crops, built homes in the Cove and, during the early 19th century, herded livestock there. "It was not all woodland," Riggs says. "A lot of it would be open, with corn fields and grazing livestock."
Although the number of Cherokee families who called Cades Cove home is unknown, as is the number of cattle or
hogs they owned and exactly how many acres of crops they planted, we do know that Cherokees were permanent residents here.
"We don't know how long they were in the Cove prior to 1820," Riggs says. "The documentary record indicates that Cherokees referred to the Cove as 'Old Cheowhee,' implying that it was an old settlement area at that time." Riggs has documented evidence of their departure even before the wide-scale removal, the "Trail of Tears," began in 1838.
The Olivers arrived in the fall of 1818, too late to build a shelter or plant crops, and they wintered over in an abandoned Cherokee dwelling that may have been a simple log cabin not too different from those the settlers constructed in the first wave of immigration. "By the turn of the century, most Cherokees lived in log cabins 10 to 13 feet square made of unhewn logs," Riggs says.
Throughout their lands, the Cherokee had adopted some of the settlers' construction methods, and by 1810, some Cherokees outside the Cove lived in two-story brick mansions and had acquired considerable fortunes, Briggs says. They also adopted the practice of keeping domestic livestock, and by the time the Olivers arrived, there were cattle and hogs throughout the mountainous region. The settlers for their part adopted Native American crops such as squash, tobacco, gourds, and pumpkins and practices such as planting beans among the corn stalks.
That first cold winter, Cherokees likely saved these first settlers from starvation, as the Olivers reported that Cherokees gave them dried pumpkin. And when the Olivers acquired their own herd of cattle the following spring, they adopted the Cherokee practice of grazing them along Abrams Creek, Dunn writes. Thus, even before the Cove was bought up by speculators in the early 19th century and sold to the hardy settlers, a human hand had already transformed the wilderness with the influx of families, their livestock, their crops, and their traditions.
From Patchwork to Prairie
By 1830, the first wave of immigrants to follow in the Olivers' footsteps had cleared more of the land and planted a variety of field crops such as corn, wheat, flax, and hay. They also cultivated "kitchen gardens" near their homesteads, planted with medicinal herbs and vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, and greens. They protected these by erecting paling fences set into the ground and sharpened on top to keep out wild animals and roaming livestock.
In addition, several grist mills for grinding corn into meal were operating by the late 1820s; and from 1827 to 1847, mining provided iron ore for Fout's Iron Works on Forge Creek near the current Cable Mill Historic Area. Riggs says Cherokees were still living in the Cove until their removal by federal troops in 1838, and Cherokee male wage laborers were employed at the iron works.
A bird's-eye view during the 19th century would reveal a landscape not too different from that shown in aerial photographs taken in 1936 after the Park Service had acquired the Cove as part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. These photos show a patchwork pattern of fields devoted to pastures, meadow hay, small grains, corn, beans, sorghum, gardens, home sites, idle land, and forest. With the residents gone, however, the land quickly began to revert to forest. By granting leases for cattle grazing and hay fields, the Park Service hoped to preserve the highly prized mountain vistas.
During the 1950s and 1960s, at the recommendation of the U.S. Soil and Conservation Service, leaseholders began introducing fescue to replace the warm-season grassesboth native and exoticthat served as pasture and hay for livestock. For nearly four decades, in summer and winter, Park visitors enjoyed vistas of high mountain ridges encircling emerald-green pastures dotted with cattle, a very different aesthetic from that imposed by the settlers through hard labor to sustain their agrarian community.
As the leases expired, the Park Service designed a new strategy to maintain the open vistas: replacing fescue with native warm-season grasses that bear descriptive names such as little blue stem, Indian grass, broom sedge, and purple top. These test fields, located on a tract near the loop road and
Hyatt Lane, differ dramatically from grazed and mowed pastures, resembling a prairie more than pasture. Yet these fields, maintained by spring burning and fall mowing, provide good habitat for wildlife and a stunning foreground for scenic views.
Kitchen gardens provided fresh vegetables and herbs for hard-working families. An early photo of the Oliver cabin contrasts with a current park photo.
Photos: National Park Service
The Pioneer Style
Today, the John Oliver cabin is the first stop on the Cades Cove loop road, and perhaps one of the most visited. This is not the original structure John and Lucretia built. The original home stood a few yards away near a spring. Rather, it is the "honeymoon" cabin built for one of their sons. The one-room structure, built of hewn logs notched at the corners, is 17 by 19 feet by 18.5 feet high.
The John Oliver cabin represents one type of structure the Park Service planned to preserve in its Depression-era master plan to create an Outdoor Museum of Mountain Culture focusing on the "pioneer" stage of development. From the 1930s through the 1960s, most of the homesteads, barns, and other structures were moved, removed, or reconstructed to represent the important architectural features of cultural significance from 1800 to 1899. At the John Oliver cabin, for example, the vegetable garden enclosed by a paling fence located south of the house was removed, and a split-rail fence was erected around the homestead.
Most of the frame homes representing the period contemporary with Park Service possession of the land were removed, but the three churches on the loop roadthe Missionary Baptist, the Methodist, and the Primitive Baptist churchesremain as examples of frame construction from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as does the John P. and Becky Cable house in the Cable Mill Historic Area.
Stomping Grounds
Like most well-sited structures in the Cove, the John Oliver cabin sits on a slight rise. But the millions of visitors each year have left their mark. The official trail leading from a parking area to the cabin is rutted, and visitors have literally gone off the beaten path, creating at least three new trails that quickly become rutted and muddy in wet weather, says Jerry McGee, Park Service historic landscape architect.
"The biggest threat to Cades Cove is not the volume of people. It is the volume of uneducated people," McGee says. If more people would subscribe to the "leave no trace" philosophy of leaving nothing and taking nothing, it would lighten the burden for maintenance workers and help in the preservation of the historical structures of the Cove.
Time is also taking a toll. For example, at the Oliver cabin, fireplace stones are falling out and there are gaping holes in the structure, says Mary Gregory, president of the Cades Cove Preservation Association (CCPA). CCPA is lending a helping hand to the Park Service's efforts to preserve the structures and the history of the Cove, including the cemeteries.
CCPA, organized in October 2000, helps the Park in its efforts to preserve historical structures, a difficult task according to David Chapman, Park historian. "We have a four-man historic preservation crew and over 100 structures to maintain, so we are always behind," says Chapman. Moreover, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 stipulate strict compliance with federal guidelines for the preservation of historical structures. "You can't just go out and buy a hand-hewn log," he says.
CCPA's highest priority for now is the cemetery at the Primitive Baptist Church. The organization's first task is to repair the path through the cemetery, which has been severely rutted from foot traffic.
"In our first work party in early November 2001, we brought it up to the same elevation as the surrounding ground," says CCPA's Gregory. "We're going to install iron pipe stanchions and chains that will rust and blend in." This will help direct the foot traffic, which at times strays directly over graves and tombstones.
"We request that people not go off the path to look at graves, unless they are looking for their own families," Gregory says. "We're also trying to save the buildings, but we started with the cemeteries because they seem to touch the most people." Aside from pitching in with wheel barrows and shovels, Gregory and the 200-plus members of CCPA, many of whom are direct descendents of residents of Cades Cove, want to tell the stories of the families and preserve the history.
Today, the livestock that roamed the grassy balds and wintered in the valley are gone. No humans hoe their gardens or rake hay or spin homespun from flaxen thread. No church bells toll a death. And the structures stand empty, mute testimony to the pioneering stage of the Cove's settlement. But the story of Cades Cove lives on in the written record and in oral history, in the remaining cabins and churches, on the tombstones that document the lives and deaths of the residents, and, with the help of CCPA, in the continued preservation of the historical structures and cemeteries. "The Park is preserving the flora and fauna," Gregory says. "We want to put a human face back onto Cades Cove."
For further information, contact David Chapman, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738, 865-436-1200.
Recommended reading:
Durwood Dunn, Cades Cove: The Life and Death of an Appalachian Community 1818-1937 (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1988).
A. Randolph Shields, The Cades Cove Story (Gatlinburg, TN: Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association, 1977).