Tipton-Oliver Homestead: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove Subdistrict, National Park Service

Hasty, David; Wheeler, Beth; Fogelquist, Sara

The Tipton-Oliver Homestead is a 2.2-acre component landscape of the Cades Cove District, part of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Eastern Tennessee. The homestead straddles the Cades Cove Loop Road, approximately two miles east of the Cable Mill complex. The site is accessible by a footpath that is adjacent to the loop road and across from the visitor pull-off parking area. The landscape is a clustered grouping of seven buildings: a log cabin, smokehouse, woodshed, apiary, and blacksmith shop, lie east of the loop road; a corn crib and barn are located to the west. The homestead also contains fields and other biotic remnants from the pre-park period. The main residence is a four-bay log house with a rear ell addition. It is clad in weatherboard siding and features 6/6 glazed windows, a rare feature in the cove. Together with other homesteads in the cove, the Tipton-Oliver Homestead is reflective of the early settlement patterns and ongoing evolution of a southern Appalachian farming community. In 1821, Revolutionary War veteran William Tipton was issued a Tennessee land grant for 640 acres at the eastern end of Cades Cove. Although he himself never lived in the cove, this is the first recorded legal land title for Cades Cove following the Calhoun Treaty of 1819, which reset the boundary of Tennessee and opened the land to non-native settlement. As Tipton continued to acquire grants and gain ownership of most of the valley floor, he began to sell land to friends and relatives from upper East Tennessee. The period of significance for the site begins in 1869, when a grandson of William Tipton, Col. J. W. H. Tipton, bought land in the cove upon which he built this farmstead. After his death in 1895, his estate was sold to Rev. William H. Oliver, and the Oliver family remained at the homestead until it was acquired for the park in 1931. The period of significance extends to 1942 to include the Park Development Era improvements. The existing landscape character primarily depicts the Park Development Era 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 altered from the historic landscape. At the Tipton-Oliver site, several frame outbuildings were destroyed, including the springhouse and apple-drying house. A post-1900 barn was taken down and replaced with a cantilever barn, reconstructed from remnants of other barns in Cades Cove. Frame additions to the log cabin and woodshed were removed. All physical evidence of functional areas and historic fencing has been lost. Several outbuildings (apiary, woodshed, corncrib, and barn) were reconstructed in their original locations. An open fescue field is maintained around the homestead. The wooded areas east of the homestead contain predominately tulip poplar in the overstory and hemlock, white pine, rhododendron, dogwood, and red maple in the understory. A portion of this area was probably cleared at one time.

Tipton-Oliver Homestead: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Cades Cove Subdistrict, National Park Service

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