Cades Cove

    Cades Cove is an isolated valley surrounded by picturesque mountains and full of wildlife. It is believed to have gotten its name after an Indian chief called “Chief Kade”. This valley was home to numerous settlers before it became a part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

 It was during the 1700s, when the Cherokee Indians first entered the Cove; they traveled through in order to cross the Smoky Mountains. They were coming from North Carolina into Tennessee to reach the Overhill settlements, which were Indian colonies in lower Tennessee. By the mid-1700’s, the Cherokee had formed a small settlement in Cades Cove known as "Otter Place." This village was positioned somewhere along the flats of Cove Creek. It is believed they were drawn into this area because an early explorer named Henry Timberlake had told that the streams in the area were full of otter.  However the Cherokee didn’t stay long because by 1819 The Treaty of Calhoun ended any claims they may have had in the Smoky Mountains. They still hunted in the area and occasionally attacked European settlers, until they were forced to abandon their homes in 1838 and sent to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears. 

The first permanent European settlers in the Cove arrived in 1818, it was a husband and wife named John Oliver, a veteran of the War of 1812, and Lucretia Frazier. When they first traveled to the the cove they were accompanied by  Joshua Jobe, who is the one that originally convinced them to stay in the cove. Joshua returned home Carter County, John and Lucretia stayed, they managed to survive their first winter by excepting dried food from some friendly Cherokee. Joshua Jobe finally returned in the Spring of 1819 and gave the Olivers two milk cows.

The coves population continued to grow over the next twenty years, at one point the population had reached six hundred and seventy one. A man by the name of William Tipton came to the Cove in 1821, he began buying up huge areas of land and sold them to his family and friends, the average farm was around one hundred and fifty to three hundred acres. Many others would come in and build iron working shops, grist mills and saw mills. As other settlers began to arrive they built homesteads on the neighboring mountains, such as Russell Gregory, for which Gregory Bald is named after.

In 1833 there was a post office established in the cove, the post master from Sevierville,Philip Seaton established a weekly mail route in 1839. They even had phone service in the 1890’s, a man by the name of  Dan Lawson and several of his neighbors constructed a phone line all the way to Maryville.

When the civil war came to the cove the population fell dramatically, due to the theft and distruction of property the cove was affected for quite awhile, but it gradually recovered. The production of moonshine also affected the cove. Most of the moonshine was produced in the Chestnut Flats area, there was quiet a bit of anomosity between those who despised the moonshiners and their product and the moonshiners who seen it as just making a living. Many disputes broke out over someone snitching to the authorities and a still getting raided. It didn’t matter if the owners of the still knew who ratted them out or not they would go after who ever they “thought” it was, which caused some innocent people to get hurt.

When the National Park was being formed at first the cove was not going to be part of it, which is what the residents were told. However by1927, everything had changed, the Tennessee General Assembly had gotten together and voted for a bill approving money to acquire more land for the national park. The people of the cove didn’t realize at the time, but this bill also gave the Park Commission the power to take the people of the coves property which was within the projected park borders by eminent domain. The residents of the Cove were furious.

But as we all can see today the people of the cove left and the area was developed as we see it today. I say developed because after the Park Service took over the land they demolished a lot of the more modern structures and kept the ones they thought depicted the era best. Don’t let these structures fool you even though some of these buildings look pretty primitive when the park took over the cove was as well educated and progressive as any rural community that surrounded the cove.