Death of a Southern Appalachian Community

by olivia sanford

As 11 million people flood through Appalachia each year, Cades Cove is an easy spot to choose to drive through. The 11-mile scenic loop is easy on many levels and an individual does not even have to get out of a car to see the beautiful view of the mountains from inside the cove. While the cove offers beautiful views, the education the visitors have driving in may be very misleading. The land is much more bare than it would have been during the time the community resided there because when the park service took hold of the land they knocked down anything that would not have been period to the time when John Oliver built his first home. The park certainly does not tell of how the tight knit community was forced out by the park service. The Primitive Baptist Church holds the graveyard where many of the Oliver family members have been buried, including the first settler to the Cove, John. While there are a few updated and rather new gravesites, the graveyard holds fast as a symbol to the community. The sight is one that exhibits a special community that makes Appalachia so special and the exact specialness that was ripped from the people’s hands. Not only were the homes of individuals of Cades Cove ripped away from their homes and land, it was something that was happening all throughout Southern Appalachia. The Great Smokey Mountain National Park Service, land that had taken a very long to acquire, is what forced over 3,000-5,000 people out their homes. Cades Cove examples the tragedy and heartbreak the people had to go through in the loss of their land, a piece of land that could very well have been in a family’s hands for over a century. [1]

            The grandson on John Oliver played a large role in the Park Services when the movement began. Unfortunately he had been greatly deceived when he first began to believe in the idea of making the Great Smokey National park happen. He was on board with ideas that a national park in his back yard would be of benefit to the community. Unfortunately, he had no idea what officials and park planned to rip him away from his home that generations had laboriously worked on and for. Not only was he losing land, the community would lose each other at a difficult time in history. While many lived a stable life on their farms, they were to be torn from it to having nothing left in the banks due to the Great Depression.[2] A man described was how he felt about the parks and industrialists coming through the land: “One day we were the happiest men on earth. But like the Indian we are slowly but surely being driven from the homes we have learned to love, and down to the man we are not friend of the government for the simple reason that every move they have made has increased our poverty”. This man’s experience examples what so many members of Cades Code experienced. The land they worked was their home, and suddenly it was no longer theirs. [3]

            The gravesite and church come together not only to make a beautiful sight, but also a well-rounded statement as to what the community meant then and now. The church represents the beauty of the special way individuals came together and celebrated their similarities in religion but in many other aspects of every day life, including the hardships. Cades Cove’s community shows the best of kind of people and relationships. Sadly, the worn graves, some of which are not comprehendible, represent the death of the cove and the people within it. The special relationships and reliability the cove members shared were ripped away as the dirt would slip through their fingers. However, the stain is still left on the people’s hands, forever representing a type of community that will never be again.

[1] Eller, Ronald D. "Land As Commodity: Industrialization of the Appalachian Forests, 1880-1940." In The Great Forest: An Appalachian Story, edited by Buxton Barry M., by Gray Sam and Williams Michael Ann, 27-42. Appalachian State University, 1985.

[2] Durwood, Dunn, Cades Cove, 241-254. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998).

[3] Eller, Ronald D. "Land As Commodity: Industrialization of the Appalachian Forests, 1880-1940." In The Great Forest: An Appalachian Story, edited by Buxton Barry M., by Gray Sam and Williams Michael Ann, 27-42. Appalachian State University, 1985.