Log Cabins and Buildings of Cades Cove

Backcountry Notes ^ | February 27, 2010 | Jay Henderson

[jay1949]

Cades Cove is a community frozen in time. Some of the log cabins and other buildings in Cades Cove were preserved and restored. These log and timber buildings now make Cades Cove a major draw in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. {30 vintage photographs}

[beckysueb]

I’ve been there. I love the Smokies so much. I could spend the rest of my life there.

[beckysueb]

I see they sell the old fashioned chocolate gravy mix. I ordered some. It is so good on a biscuit.

[Peter Horry]

It can get crowded at times, especially in late October when the leaves are turning. It has taken me an hour to get through Gatlinburg.

I have been there the first week of November and found it much better. The leaves were still beautiful, there was snow in the higher elevations, much of the crowd was gone and the rooms were significantly cheaper.

[Aquamarine]

My favorite Cades Cove photo.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[ozarkgirl]

This is so cool. The pictures on the site and then the beautiful pictures people posted. I may change vacation plans this year, I’ve never visited the Smokies but have always wanted to.

[cva66snipe]

There's a real good hike from Cades Cove Picnic area up to Spence Field. It's about 5 miles to the field one way. From Spence Field you can access the Appalachian Trial and go north about a mile or less and you are on Old Rocky Top. That is where Rocky Top actually is LOL. It's about halfway between Spence Field and Thunderhead Bald. It's a saddle or knoll kind of a high place on the trail and it narrows there with a fairly steep drop on each side IIRC.

The view from Thunderhead looking down into Cades Cove is well worth the hike about any time of year. If someone is in reasonable physical shape it can be a one day hike with a total of around 12-14 miles. Perons will need to pay close attention to the trail signs and never let kids out of their site hiking the area for any reason. Hiking there is fun and enjoyable but it can be deadly if you don't know what you're doing and go off the established trail. Much for so for a child. I was on that trail hiking the day following when they lost a 6 year old boy that was never found. That was in June 1969.

Spence Field, Russell Field, and Thunderhead Bald are on top of the mountain above the campground/picnic area side of the Cover. They are as I understand it natural fields and were used by the early settlers in the summer months. The trail is mainly an old narrow gauge rail road bed in most places built before the park. The abandoned railroad beds used for logging in the early 1900's became hiking trails in many places. To look at the pictures of this area and other parts of the Smoky's in the early 1900's it was vastly different as the mountains had been timbered off. In other words what you see now is a result of the land gone back to nature close to 100 years later.

I've hiked quite a bit in that area in my youth including several back country hikes over the mountain into an area called Eagle Creek for trout fishing.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I’m embarrassed to admit I have not been to Cades Cove since August 1979 (right about my 5th birthday). I hope to go back again sometime, but when my health is better. It’s a bit taxing for me to do long walks, though. I had a bit of trouble when I visited Cloudland Canyon State Park in NW Georgia (a beautiful state park if you ever get the chance to see it, reminiscent of some Western parks) with my being woefully out-of-shape to attempt a descent down to see a waterfall there, and that was a relatively short trail, just a bit arduous for me since you had to descend and ascend into and out of a canyon.

[cva66snipe]

I hiked up to Rocky Top about 15 years or so ago. I couldn’t do it now nor will I likely ever again. I have trouble walking two miles on level ground these days. My feet won’t take it.

[Semper Mark]

...I’ve never visited the Smokies but have always wanted to.

Overlooking Gatlinburg, Tennessee
near The National Park and Cades Cove

[Aquamarine]

Same view of Gatlinburg angled more towards the west.

[Semper Mark]

Beautiful.

[ETL]

Here’s a great link for wonderful views of the Smoky Mountains...

http://www.clinchmountainhome.com/travel/smokymountains/SmokyMountains.html

[Semper Mark]

"There’s an old church in the Cove...beautiful...if ever there, take a look at the tombstones in the church’s graveyard...where a number of men who fought in the American Revolution and their families are buried; also a lot of children who died young."

If I remember correctly, several of the families who settled in Cades Cove were given land grants for service in the Revolutionary War.

My wife's paternal ancestors as well as the paternal ancestors of one of my brothers in-law were among the families who settled in the Cove.

My paternal ancestors settled in nearby Wears Valley.

It's beautiful country up there alright, but you can bet that it was a hard way of life back in those days.

[Rebelbase]

Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart is a great read about living in the Smokies 100 years ago.

Free online: http://tinyurl.com/yk2qyut

[Rebelbase]

In the fall mornings those fields have deer herds and turkeys galore.

[calex59]

I get upset here in Northern CA, because much of the old stuff has been allowed to disappear. When I was a boy, we had all the old stage stations, Wait's station on hwy 16, Dry town , Amador city, Sutter Creek, Jackson and then further up the hill Pine Grove, Pioneer, then on to Cook's station, Ham's Station and Black's station and others that no longer have names.

The original buildings and, in some cases no buildings at all, are long gone. Some new comers to the area have no idea how to pronounce the names or care for that matter.

Some old cabins still exist, some land marks, such as Maidens Grave, still mark the trail that the gold hungry crowd followed to get here trying to find the yellow metal. Far too few of them in my opinion.

The old names such as "The Old Dry Diggins(now Plymouth), Hangtown(Now Placerville), Bottileas(now known as Jackson, the original name was Portuguese, meaning "place of bottles") and Rancheria(which only exists in history books, but if you know which old road to take is still visible with one concrete marker) are gone forever, the victims of an uncaring youth.

[Aquamarine]

We took this picture of a deer in CC, there's bears out there also but we never see them.