Cultural Heritage in the Smoky Mountains National Park by Sheila Myers
Before it became a national park that draws more than 12 million people a year, The Smoky Mountains National Park was home to the Cherokee, and after that, settlers from Europe. They settled in the ‘coves’ or flat valley areas in the mountains which allowed them to raise crops and livestock. They had churches, schools, unique cantilevered barns, hen houses, and cabins. Thankfully, a historian had the foresight to encourage the government to preserve homesteads in the park as cultural heritage sites. And that is where the research journey for my novel, The Truth of Who You Are began.
What drew me first to the region (besides the majestic mountains) were the stories of the people who once inhabited Cades Cove. The community structures are still intact, preserved by the park for visitors to witness what it may have been like growing up in the shadows of the mountains. Regional museums have books about the people who once lived in the area, how they conducted business, and lived before the government bought them out to make the national park during the Great Depression. This eleven-mile circuit holds what remains of an entire community that once lived there: homes, corn cribs, barns, smoke, and spring houses. The people that lived in Cades Cove had full, industrious lives.
Their economy was based on a bartering system with the nearby cities and towns. And they had plenty to barter before the woods were ravaged by blight, forest fire, and habitat destruction. Ginseng, chestnuts, corn, and cattle were just some of the products the people of Cades Cove bartered and sold at markets in Maryville and Knoxville, TN. Luckily residents (many descendants) from nearby Townsend, Tennessee advocated for preserving the architecture of Cades Cove. It is the only area in the park where you can find everything intact. Which was fortunate because when the government started acquiring land for the park in the mid-1920s they tore down or let buildings rot after their occupants moved out. Just like the natural areas in the park, Cades Cove is a great place to rocket the imagination.
One of the more interesting characters who lived in the park were the Walker sisters. Their homestead is also intact. I used their life story as inspiration for the narrator Ben Taylor’s aunts. They were an industrious bunch. These six sisters took over the 120 acre farm their father left them in the early 1920s. They managed to live off the fruit of their labors, growing crops, fruit trees, making honey, raising animals for meat and wool for clothing.
When the government agents came knocking in the early 1930s asking them to leave, they said firmly, “No.”
The government offered (as they did everyone they approached about leaving) money that would be equivalent to $90,000 today, to find a new home. They still refused. After hiring a lawyer, they came to a compromise with the government: they would take the money, but they got to stay on the land.
Although younger families took the money and left, elderly people who had nowhere to go were allowed to stay until their death. But the government restricted what they could do. For the Walker sisters this meant they couldn’t cut wood, hunt, or fish. They managed to survive and became a tourist attraction after their story appeared in Saturday Evening Post April 27, 1946 edition. They grabbed the opportunity to sell homemade products to the people who ventured to their cabin in the woods. Their cabin is also still intact, and visitors hike the trail to so how they once lived.
Other stories held my attention, and I incorporated them into my novel as well. The story of William Walker (distant relation to the Walker sisters) who owned most of Walker Valley before the Smoky Mountains National Park was formed inspired me to base my story on his plight. William lived a colorful life. According to his descendants, he had three wives, and some estimate he sired over 20 children. He settled in what is now Tremont Institute at the park, in the 1850s. Lumber operations using the latest in steam engine technology, were able to snake their way higher into the mountains and began to close in on his valley. He tried to keep his old growth woods from the clutches of the Little River Lumber Company. He hung on to his land until 1918, selling it off to the owner of the Little River Co. on his death bed with the understanding that the old trees would be spared. What he never knew was that eventually his trees were cut, post-mortem, by new owners of the lumber company, and that he woefully was underpaid for the land.
In my coming-of-age novel, Ben Taylor’s father is fending off the lumber companies who want to exploit his land, and government agents who him to sell his land for the park. Fiercely protective of his old growth forest high along the ridge, he battles with both entities as the family slowly descends into poverty during the Great Depression. When Ben’s father dies, Ben takes a job with the US Conservation Corps. He and hundreds of other men from the eastern cities, re-establish the devasted forest landscape. And Ben witnesses’ transformation of his community into a cultural heritage site for the national park.
Sources:
Cades Cove: A Personal History by Judge William Wayne Oliver. The Great Smoky Mountains Association. 2014
A Home in Walker Valley: The Story of Tremont. By Jeremy Lloyd. Great Smoky Mountains Association. 2009
The Last Train to Elkmont. By Vic Weals. Olden Press. 1993.
Sheila Myers is an award winning author of five novels. The Truth of Who You Are was published in April 2022 by Black Rose Writing and is available in print at all bookstores and on ebook on Amazon as well as in audio. You can contact her at https://www.sheilamyers.com/
Interesting post loved reading it!
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