Cades Cove Valley Floor: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove Subdistrict, National Park Service

Hasty, David; Wheeler, Beth; Fogelquist, Sara

The Cades Cove Valley Floor is a 2,383 acre component landscape of Eastern Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This acreage is an approximation based on NPS maps from the 1940s. Completely encircled by mountains, access to the valley floor of Cades Cove is from the northeast via a winding road that parallels Laurel Creek. The site is characterized by an open, grassy valley floor enclosed by steep, wooded mountains, and is drained by Abrams Creek and its two main branches. A loop road, which connects several historic homesteads, churches, and a mill, encircles the valley floor. The historic condition of the valley was a subsistence agricultural community with external access via three roads that traversed the northwestern, western, and southwestern mountains. The cleared valley floor was divided into small and large agricultural fields. The lower slopes of the mountains were cleared for crops and working wood lots. The period of significance for the site begins in 1818 with the settlement of John Oliver, and extends to 1942 to include the Park Development Era improvements. The existing landscape character primarily depicts the 1938 Park Development Era master plan and its interpretation of the cove "pioneer" stage of settlement. The plan primarily involved improving the alignment and quality of the old Laurel Creek Road and establishing field exhibits to interpret mountain culture. Although historic property lines extended across the loop road to include open land on the valley floor, most of the farmsteads included in exhibits were interpreted as smaller sites with the primary focus on the dwelling house. The valley floor was not included in the field exhibits; still, the vistas onto the valley floor were an essential part of the scene being created during this era. During the Mission 66 period of development, a campground, day use area, and horse concession were constructed on east end of the valley floor. Beginning in the 1930s, National Park Service used soil conservation principles and aesthetic principles to guide land management decisions, taking priority over determinations of historic authenticity. Early actions saw grazing, consolidation of land parcels, removal of fences, and destruction of native grasses during the leveling of fields. In the 1940s, new guidelines required crop rotation, more meadowland, and elimination of row crops. When the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) became involved during the 1950s, conservation plans were managed for each special use permit issued for the valley floor, and permit holders were monitored for the first time. A new park management plan in 1967 intended to preserve the open, pastoral appearance of the landscape without trying to recreate its agricultural character, and cattle grazing and haying became the preferred land uses. While effective in maintaining the open landscape, the number of livestock on the valley floor has also suggested to visitors that early settlers were ranchers; in fact, only Kermit Caughron grazed cattle. Despite the changes in the composition of the valley floor, the area retains the open feeling it had during its historic period. Other natural resource projects include the removal of drainage structures to restore meadows and swampy lowlands, and the restoration of native grasses.

Cades Cove Valley Floor: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove Subdistrict, National Park Service

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