Peter Cable and Dan Lawson Homestead: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove District, National Park Service

Hasty, David; Wheeler, Beth; Fogelquist, Sara

The Peter Cable and Dan Lawson Homestead is a 3.2-acre component landscape of the Cades Cove District, a part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee. The site, located south of the Cades Cove Loop Road that circles the valley floor, is accessible by a nonhistoric footpath adjacent to visitor pull-off parking. The homestead contains features typical of a Cades Cove farmstead, including a log cabin and two log outbuildings. In addition to these, three major topographical remnants remain from the pre-Park period: earthen mounds that outline most of the old vegetable garden, earthworks that once directed and contained water flowing from the spring into the yard and out again, and a shallow depression that marks the location of the partially-filled cellar underneath the existing Lawson cabin. The residence and farm of Kermit Caughron was east of the Dan Lawson cabin. Caughron was an agricultural leasee who grazed cattle in the cove for more than thirty years before his death in April 1999. He and his wife continued a lifestyle removed from the development of cultural exhibits, and he reported that his residence was constructed with materials assembled from other structures in the cove that had been dismantled. The Caughron Home and associated outbuildings and features were removed after his death. The Dan Lawson Barn (early twentieth-century) is also located on this part of the site. Together with other homesteads of the cove, the Peter Cable and Dan Lawson Homestead reflects the early settlement and ongoing evolution of a southern Appalachian farming community. It is also significant as an example of the vernacular architecture of farm buildings of the region and time period. The period of significance for the site begins in 1825, when Peter Cable purchased the property from Jabez Thurman. Cable built a cabin, no longer extant, west of the present house. In 1850, Peter Cable’s daughter married Daniel B. Lawson. Lawson acquired the property in 1856, built the present log cabin, and took over farming operations in 1866 upon the death of his father-in-law. By the end of the civil war, Daniel Lawson was the largest landowner in the cove, his holdings stretching south to north across the center of the cove. When he died in 1905, he left most of his estate to his two single daughters. Descendants of Lawson remained in the house until 1936, when many residents of the cove were required by the NPS to vacate their properties. The period of significance extends to 1942 to include the Park Development Era improvements. The existing landscape character primarily depicts the Park Development Era 1938 master plan and its interpretation of the cove "pioneer" settlement. Because the NPS decided to make Cades Cove an "Outdoor Museum of Mountain Culture," the current condition of the landscape has been substantially altered from the historic landscape. An ell-shaped frame house stood next to the existing log house from the early 1900s until the late 1930s but was removed by the NPS, and the cellar beneath the existing Lawson cabin was filled in. A corncrib and springhouse are no longer standing. The system that brought water from the spring into the yard where it was used for domestic needs has been covered over. The vegetable garden enclosed by a paling fence located north of the house was removed, and an undocumented split-rail fence was erected around the homestead. The historic approach from the driveway that bounds the site on the east was changed to accommodate visitor traffic. The Peter Cable and Dan Lawson Homestead remains a good example of log construction with front and rear shed additions, and a number of historical structures and landscape features still exist at the site such as the smokehouse, granary, remnant fields, road traces, and topographical remnants of the garden, cellar, and pond.

Peter Cable and Dan Lawson Homestead: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove District, National Park Service

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