Sustainable Living in Cades Cove

By Ben Temperley


This past summer break I took a trip to the Smoky Mountains, staying in a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN. On the final day of my trip, my wife and I toured the pioneer settlement outside of Gatlinburg known as Cades Cove. A cove is a relatively flat area between mountain ridges. Cades Cove began as a small pioneer community in 1821 that reached 685 (132 families) in 1850 (Brewer, 1999, p. 23). Cades Cove is now part of a national park with over 70 historic buildings. I would like to highlight the sustainable features I encountered on my tour of the cove.

The first building I encountered was the John Oliver Place. This is the oldest log cabin in the cove, built in the 1820s. Local trees were felled with simple tools (without the use of fossil fuels) to provide material for the cabin. Open spaces between the logs were filled with mud (no VOCs) to seal out the elements. The stone chimney is filled with a mud mortar. The construction process involved little embodied energy. In addition the cabin has lasted nearly 200 years!

Elijah Oliver, son of John Oliver, bought a property in Cades Cove after the Civil War (Brewer, 1999, p. 11). Without a refrigerator or a freezer, Oliver used a spring house to keep milk and butter cool. The spring house was built over a stream on his property. The cool spring water kept perishables from spoiling. In order to store and preserve meat for an entire year, Oliver built a smokehouse. Corn was stored in a corn crib for grinding into meal to last until the next harvest. Without motorized farm equipment or vehicles, animals and farm tools needed to be kept in a barn. Hay was stored in barns. Cows provided milk. Elijah even piped water from the nearby stream to his kitchen sink (Brewer, 1999, p. 11).


The grist mill was my favorite building in the cove. It harnesses energy from a creek that flows through the cove. Water is funneled through a wooden flume that pours onto the large wheel, causing it to turn and providing energy to grind grain. Again, fossil fuels are not involved. Instead, gravity is used to power the mill. The grinding speed is adjustable based on how much water is allowed to pass through a gate on the water flume.

Cades Cove had a blacksmith shop. The blacksmith shaped iron into axes, adzes, knives, bolts, saws, etc. A sustainable quality of the blacksmith shop was that iron was not wasted. If a saw broke, it could be made into a butcher knife. Iron was readily recycled, as it is today.

A final sustainable feature may be represented by the village's communal spirit. They attended church together in the churches they built. Neighbors helped each other husk corn, make molasses, peel apples and quilt. They gathered chestnuts together on weekends.

The Cades Cove families lived a sustainable lifestyle before we realized the importance of sustainability. They used local resources. Those resources were renewable. They did not rely on burning fossil fuels. The materials they used did not off-gas harmful VOCs. They lived within their means. They did not waste their resources, and their lifestyle fostered a sense of community togetherness.



Works Cited
Brewer, C. (1999). Cades Cove Tour. Gatlinburg, TN: Great Smoky Mountains Association.