Cades Cove Heritage Sites (Part I)

Thursday, 19 April

We combined our exploration of the heritage sites on the Cades Cove Loop with other activities, balancing history with hikes to see waterfalls, stops to smell wildflowers, and encounters with bears, deer, and wild turkeys.  No wonder it took us three days to visit the sites that rim the 11-mile (18 km) loop that, with few exceptions, is open only to one-way traffic!  This post covers the sites we explored along the bottom of the loop.

The blue box shows the general area of the Cades Cove Loop.
[map courtesy of the nps website]

Before the white settlers arrived in Cades Cove in the early 1800s, the valley was the hunting grounds of Native Americans.  In fact, the area was originally known as Kate’s Cove after the wife of an Indian Chief.  Although they were here for centuries, few signs of the Indians remain today.  Not so with the white settlers; signs of their lives can be found in the houses, churches, and mills they built; in the trees they planted; in the meadows that were once filled with crops; in the fences they put up and mended.  In fact, the paved road that takes visitors around the cove today pretty much follows the path of the wagon roads of old.

The signs of the white settlers’ lives are marked on this map from the
Cades Cove Loop Auto Tour Booklet.

There is a lot of history here and not nearly enough space for me to re-write what has been so ably documented by others.  So, I’ll leave you with a link that you can check out if you want to do more reading.  In the meantime, I’ll move onto a photo journal of our explorations.  Most of the information I’m relating is from the auto tour booklet (which I purchased for a $1 in 1994), supplemented with what I read on signage around the loop and on a few websites (like the one I linked above).

Our first stop was at the John Oliver Place (#3 on the map).  We parked the car in the closer of the two parking lots (not by design) and strolled the short trail through the open meadow where three deer provided us with plenty of photo ops.  I’ve been around deer before, and they’re usually very skittish.  Not this trio.  Obviously used to visitors, they tolerated our shutter-clicking and went about grazing upon the fresh spring grass.

Thanks for the memories, guys!

The Olivers lived on this land from the time they purchased it in 1826 until the Park was established in 1934.  Typical of the mid-1850s houses found on the eastern frontier, the cabin was constructed using techniques brought to the area by the descendants of European immigrants.  The cabin that stands on the grounds today is actually the one the Olivers built for their son to live in after he married.

A head count of 10-12 in this small cabin would not have been unusual.
There’s one room downstairs and one small room upstairs; No privacy, that’s for sure.

The notched corners of the logs required no pegs or nails; they were locked
together by gravity.  The outward slope of the logs allowed the water to drain away
from the notch, thus discouraging rot.  Chinks between the logs were filled with mud
to keep the wind and rain out.  to conserve energy and maintain the integrity of the
structure, Windows were small (in this case long and narrow), as were doors.
The stone chimney was laid in mud mortar.  3,000 handmade shakes covered the roof.

Religion was an important part of the settlers’ lives and several churches were built to meet their spiritual needs.

The Baptist church was organized in 1827 by some of the earliest settlers.  In 1839, a national dissension with regards to missionary work took its toll and the congregation was split.  Those who did not favor such work stayed with the original church and changed their name to the Primitive Baptist Church (#4 on the map).  Those who favored missionary work formed the Missionary Baptist Church (#7 on the map).

The congregation of the Primitive Baptist Church met in a log building until the
current structure was built in 1887. 

The graves in the cemetery at the Primitive Baptist Church hint at the lives that were
once a vibrant part of the valley.

We weren't the only visitors at the cemetery behind the Primitive Baptist Church;
there were a couple of wild turkeys scratching for seeds amongst the dry leaves,
but they were too far apart to get both in one shot.

The current Missionary Baptist Church dates from 1894.  At the time, there were 40
members of the church.  This number eventually rose to 115.
[P.S.  Another source dates the church to 1915.]

Scenes from inside the Missionary Baptist Church.
A stove would have stood on the spot where today there is a brick cross.
I’ve been unable to find any information on when and why the cross was placed there.

In between our stops at the two Baptist churches, we visited the Methodist Church (stop #5 on the map).  Organized in the 1820s, there were fewer members of this faith.  In fact, they had to rely on a circuit riding preacher for their services.  The Methodists weren’t immune to dissension either; in their case over the Civil War.  Today, there’s nothing but a cemetery left of Hopewell Methodist, the church that was formed by the dissidents.

According to the records, the current building, which replaced the original log cabin church, was built in 115 days for $115 by a carpenter/blacksmith named McCampbell.  He later became the preacher of the church.

symmetrical doors were a common feature of the churches of the area.  men entered through one door; women and children through the other.  they sat in pews separated by a divider, which was frustrating for courting couples.  That said, I saw no sign of a divider inside, so perhaps it’s true that the Cades Cove Methodists were more relaxed and sat where they pleased (as the linked website above says) and the double doors were just a design feature copied from another church.

Some of the many graves in the cemetery attached to the Methodist Church;
the number of infant graves speak to the high mortality rate.

I thought I could get all of the heritage sites into one post; I should have known better.  Consider this part one of two … or perhaps three.