SIGHTLINE
WINTER/SPRING 2002
Vol. 3 No. 1
What Might Have Been
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
What Might Have Been
In the early days of Park Service management, proponents of development and those in favor of preservation vied for control of Cades Cove's future.
By Dennis McCarthy
Cades Cove has been a focal point of National Park Service policy since the birth of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Park personnel wrestled with how best to manage the Cove in the early 1930s, and they continue to do so today. The policies and practices that have shaped Cades Cove have become a part of our national heritage.
During the 1930s, when the National Park Service was undergoing rapid expansion, two campsthe developers and the preservationistswarred over national park policy. Arno Cammererthe third director of the National Park Service, from 1933 to 1940, and the man who oversaw the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Parkwas in a quandary over what the national parks should be.
Developers wanted the parks to be tourist meccas, providing an economic boost to the regions they were in. The developers envisioned luxurious hotels, fine restaurants, swimming pools, tennis courts, and vast networks of roads for visitors to easily navigate what Congress had first called national "pleasuring grounds."
Preservationists, on the other hand, saw the parks as sanctuaries for the contemplative sojourner. Roads, and certainly development, were anathema. Parks should be preserves for wildlife, plant communities, and spectacular geologic features. And hiking trails, while okay, should not be too intrusive.
Early on, Cammerer sided with the developers, so when the ill-named Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association proposed damming Abrams Creek to create a three-and-a-half-mile lake for swimming, boating, and fishing in Cades Cove, Cammerer concurred. Park Superintendent J.R. Eakin approved too. A lake in Cades Cove would go nicely with the statuary, carillon bells, luxury lodges, and restaurants that boosters in and out of the Park Service were proposing. Besides, proponents could justify a lake as a restoration project since geological evidence suggested that the Cove had held a lake eons earlier.
John Oliver delivered mail to Cove residents in the early part of the 20th Century.
On the side of the preservationists, however, were four formidable advocates: Benton MacKaye, father of the Appalachian Trail; Bernard Frank, a TVA engineer; Knoxville lawyer Harvey Broome; and Bob Marshall, a forester for the U.S. Forest Service who gave his name to one of the West's truly great wilderness areas. These four men came up with the idea of a wilderness league after a hike to Clingman's Dome in the fall of 1934. A few months later, with the support of wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold and a few others, they created the Wilderness Society.
Preservation Trumps Development
The fledgling society's first great challenge was to prevent the flooding of Cades Cove and the construction of a skyline drive along the crest of the new Park. By the end of 1935, the Wilderness Society's initial campaign was a success; the lake and the highway were effectively dead, although a small segment of the road, already under construction from Newfound Gap to Clingmans Dome, would eventually be finished.
The wilderness advocates won over not only local Park officials, they won over Arno Cammerer too. By the end of his term as director of the Park Service, Cammerer proclaimed that henceforth, all national parks would be true "wilderness preserves."
Still, even though Cades Cove was not to become a developed recreation center, it did present special problems. The Cove was definitely not wilderness. It had been farmed extensively by European descendants for over 100 years and by Native Americans for generations before that. Much of the beauty of the Cove rested with its rural appeal. While forests abounded, especially on the surrounding ridges, the valley floor remained largely open. The Cove's fields and farmsteads exuded a bucolic charm that Park advocates wanted to preserve.
When the Cove lands had been purchased for inclusion in the Park, homesteaders were forced to move out. In 1928, 110 families lived in the Cove. By late-1935, only 21 families were left, and these were told they would have to leave by the following year. No one was left to take care of the fields. The forests soon encroached, filling in the vistas, hiding the homesteads, and converting the Cove into just another lovely valley. The Park Service realized that if it didn't do something soon, it would lose the Cove's unique historical heritage for good.
A Historic Idea
Edward Hummel, a Park Service employee who years later would become superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, suggested that Cades Cove be treated as a historical area, just like George Washington's birthplace and the Civil War sites that the Park Service had recently acquired. It was a clever solution. While national parks are generally preserved as unspoiled wilderness, historical areas are maintained in their historical setting. The idea of maintaining a historical area within a national park caught on because it allowed the Park staff to maintain the rural beauty and openness of the Cove.
The Park adopted the idea, Cades Cove was declared a historical area, and, in 1945, a few families who had once lived in the Cove were allowed to return and lease the land. Before long, the open vistas and vast fields in the Cove were restored.
The Park decided to maintain Cades Cove as a 19th-century farm community. The Cove's 20th-century structures were torn down, and earlier structures were preserved. An old grist mill, built by John Cable at the end of the Civil War, was returned to operation. The Park Service established demonstrations of historical farming practices and other aspects of life on a 19th-century farmsuch as plowing with horses, grinding sorghum to make molasses, quilting, making rifles, and operating a moonshine still.
Decline and Restoration
During the 1950s and 1960s, before the environmental movement took off, the Soil Conservation Service worked with the Park Service and leaseholders in the Cove to drain wetlands to make the fields more productive for hay and pasture. Leaseholders began planting tall fescue, a popular hay crop native to Europe. Before long, the native grassesbig and little bluestem, Indian grass, and purple topwere all but displaced by their European kin.
In many respects, tall fescue makes a fine forage grass; it is drought resistant and highly adaptable to a variety of soil conditions, and it stays green year around. It is not without problems, however. Fescue is not a particularly good cover crop for wildlife. Heavy rains and snows can knock over the grass, especially during winter when cover is critical to deer, quail, and turkey. And once the grass is on the ground, it cannot right itself until the next growing season.
By the 1970s, scientists also discovered that some varieties of tall fescue carry a fungus that reduces weight gain and lowers milk production in cattle, makes them sensitive to heat, and lowers the birth rate of both cattle and horses.
Since tall fescue was proving not to be the boon it had been thought to be, and it certainly was not typical of a 19th-century farm, Park personnel within the past decade have begun restoring native grasses in the Cove. In an attempt to return the landscape to something closer to what earlier settlers experienced, the Park Service has also begun restoring wetlands that were ditched and drained half a century ago.
Epilogue
Today, the landscape of the Cove is not appreciatively different from what it was in the mid-1800s. Although it has a few more trees, perhaps, and the fields still host a fairly uniform cover of 1950s fescue, given time, the Cove will acquire the feral look of a prairie as native grasses return. Certainly, far more deer populate the Cove today than they did in the 19th century, but turkeys are fewer. The roads are much improved, and snake-rail fences have been replaced with barbed wire.
Even into the 20th Century, Cove residents were self-sufficient, much as their pioneer ancestors had been. Homemade molasses, processed through a horse-powered mill, provided "sweetening."
So while small differences are visible here and there, the Cove has been successfully preserved as a historical area, just as Edward Hummel proposed. And, more important, Hummel's idea set a precedent for parks around the nation.
Preserving Cades Cove was a crucial turning point for other national policies too. The Wilderness Society, which rose to national prominence over Cades Cove and the Great Smokies, became the leading national advocate for wilderness protection. Harvey Broome, the society's first president and staunchest wilderness supporter, even attended the signing of the Wilderness Act at the White House in 1964.
We may never know if Cades Cove was on Broome's mind as he stood beside President Lyndon Johnson in the Rose Garden on that late summer day nearly four decades ago, but it's a safe bet that it was never far from his heart.
For more information, contact Bob Miller, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738, or call 865-436-1207.