Cades Cove History: The Last Family To Have Lived in Cades Cove

Cades Cove in Tennessee

Today, Cades Cove is a popular tourist destination. But for the Caughrons, it was home (photo by Andrew S/stock.adobe.com)

Cades Cove is a national treasure that is rich in history, a jewel of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

But Rex Caughron doesn’t bother much with going anymore.

“Very seldom do I go through the Cove,” he said. “It don’t look like Cades Cove to me.”

In another life, Cades Cove – or at least a hefty piece of it – would have been his birthright.

The son of Kermit and Lois Caughron, Rex is a fifth-generation descendant of the Shields who first settled the area and carved out a life among the mountains’ natural beauty.

Now, as the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the national park in 1934 approaches, Rex probably knows the land, the hills and valleys, the knobs and balds and trails, the creeks and the butts as well as anyone living.

Who were the first settlers in Cades Cove?

According to the National Park Service (NPS), the first European settlers arrived to the Cove in the early 1820s. The land was fertile and supplied the settlers with crops such as corn. They built log houses, barns and smokehouses.

Before the European settlers arrived, Cherokee Indians traveled through the valley to hunt abundant wildlife.

Baptist and Methodist churches were established in the 1820s. By 1850, the population reached 685.

John Oliver, a veteran of the War of 1812, was a notable early settler to the Cove. The Oliver Cabin is the oldest standing structure in the park today.

the inside of a church at Cades Cove
A view inside the historical Cades Cove Primitive Baptist Church (photo by ehrlif/stock.adobe.com)

What was it like to grow up in Cades Cove?

Rex’s dad Kermit Caughron was born in the Cove in May of 1912. 

He grew up there, went to church and school and learned who he was gonna be in life alone in the high mountains.

As a young man, Kermit spent his summers herding cattle and sheep up along the North Carolina border, earning $1 a head for the season, working up where the Appalachian trail runs now.

“Whenever he came up, it wasn’t a park. They could rabbit hunt and there wasn’t deer or bear,” Rex said. “The deer didn’t show up until the late 50s.”

In a 1975 interview, Kermit explained bears were a danger to livestock.

“Used to, when one got in, why we come down here, and we’d get up a crew of hunters, you know, and dogs and go back up there and kill it,” Kermit said. “There wasn’t any open season or closed season. Why, one killed a cow, why, a calf, why, we killed a bear, then had a feast.”

The cattle could graze up in the mountains, in part, because each fall the mountain people would set fires to beat back the brush and make way for the grasses to grow fresh and new in the spring. Now the forest has taken those lands back for itself.

“They burn it. I can remember them burning those big brush fires up there,” Rex said. “I don’t guess they’ll see that again. They’re gonna let nature take its course.”

The transition to the national park

According to the NPS, when Tennessee and North Carolina began to purchase land for the national park, one of the first large pieces of land included most of the mountains north of the Cove.

When the government came and bought the land in Elkmont, folks got lifetime leases to live on their homestead.

The people in the Cades Cove area were told to move.

The NPS says some families welcomed the state’s effort to buy the park. But others resisted.

For the Caughrons, Kermit’s father sold and moved the family to a farm in Maryville.

Kermit left his beloved mountains for a time – four years to be exact – but Lois told the Daily Times in 2007 that Kermit was never satisfied with life off of the mountain.  

“Kermit worked a day or two at Alcoa, then put in a 10-day notice. He’d stay with some of his cousins in Alcoa and then come home on weekends, but he’d rather farm as work out there.”

Lois, by the way, made it known in the same article she’d just as soon stayed where there was electricity, plumbing and a heat pump.

“I never wanted to go back to Cades Cove,” she said.

Still, Kermit negotiated his return. He and Lois moved back the year they got married.

Kermit had a five-year lease on the old homeplace. He raised cattle in the Cove. Kermit became known as the “bee man”.

He sold fresh honey for a dollar a jar from a stand near his home, entirely on the honor system.

A water wheel and old mill at Cades Cove
An old mill in the woods at Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains (photo by Nicola/stock.adobe.com)

The family’s agreement with the park service

In a way, the Caughrons served as living museum exhibits with the caveat that they met the conditions of the lease.

The park service always had a 90-day out clause on the five-year lease. If the park service decided it was time for the Caughrons to leave, they’d have 3 months to resettle their lives.

“We done what the park service wanted,” Rex said. “We kept the pastures mowed and put up the hay and tried to keep the cattle away from the Loop Road.”

Kermit and Lois were back living in the Cove when Rex joined the family, though he was born at an old doctor’s house in Walland, which is a ways up the road toward Maryville. 

Rex was a member of the next to the last generation to be raised in the Cove.

As Rex obtained his own five-year renewable lease for a home near the ranger’s station, his daughters would have the honor of being the Cove’s last generation.

Preserving a national treasure, erasing a family’s way of life

Over the decades, Rex served witness to the rippling effects of the national park’s creation, which both preserved a national treasure and erased his daddy’s way of life.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said. “When I started school, there were 27 in my class. When I graduated, in 1962, there were only three.”

That ride to school was something of an ordeal.

“That bus driver lived on past the old mill,” Rex said. “He hauled us out in the morning before light and dropped us back off after seven at night. It was a long day.”

And it was a longer day while they were building the bridge at the Townsend Wye. The forced detour took the bus along Rich Mountain Road.

“Those awful old school buses didn’t have no power,” he explained. “It rode second gear about all the way over. I didn’t enjoy that ride across Rich Mountain.”

Over the years, Rex came to know the roads in and out of the park about as well as he knew the land itself.

“I know the road forward and backward out of the Cove,” he said. “I can lay down in the back seat of a car, I can tell you exactly where I’m at on the road.”

Even though he doesn’t go back into the Loop, he still rides that road to visit friends at the campground and he still carries his deep affection for the Cove.

“It’s where I made a living, where I raised four girls,” he said. “How quiet it was at night, and the stars, that’s another thing that stood out to me. You didn’t have no street lights, didn’t have no people,”

But as deep as his affection for the place is, Rex isn’t prone to waxing poetic. His life in the Cove was a working, practical thing. His favorite memory isn’t a creek, a hike or the scenery.

Abrams Falls in Townsend Tennessee
Caughron says life in the Cove wasn’t always about work. They would often hike up to Abrams Falls (photo by Delaney/stock.adobe.com)

Memories on life in the Cove

Asked about his biggest memories of life in the Cove, his answers are pragmatic.

“The biggest thing I can remember is working,” he said.

“I started driving a tractor before I went to grade school. That was a big thing for me. I enjoyed it. The only thing I didn’t get to do, I didn’t have nobody to play with other than my two sisters, that was the biggest disadvantage. That and if you wanted to go to town and get anything it was 35 minutes.”

It seems tourists would have been a bigger nuisance to the Caughrons, but Rex said the only time the gawkers were much of an issue was when it was time to put up hay and the tractors needed to use the Loop Road.

“Tourists didn’t bother us except in hay time on the Loop. They wasn’t in no hurry but we were,” he said. “If you were stopped working on the fence, they would stop and talk occasionally.”

The tourist would prove a source of amusement.

“The funniest thing, we were working right past dad’s house on the fence, a lady came around the curve and saw a bunch of vultures. She started shouting ‘Look at the turkeys,’ and she drove into a culvert,” he said. “We helped her out but her calling a vulture a turkey, that was funny to us.”

Of course, before the Loop Road was paved, it caused trouble for more than just the tourists.

Rex told of a time when his dad was younger and there was just an old primitive rock road. The mail carrier John W. Oliver – who later sued the government in a failed attempt to keep his land – got stuck trying to get the mail truck over a large hill.

Kermit said he heard the mailman, who was also a Baptist preacher, calling him for help. Kermit pushed the mail up the hill, only to fail to make the top and watch it come back down. After three attempts, Oliver told Caughron to go fetch the team and pull him over the hill.

Once the team was attached and pulled the preacher over the hill, Oliver reached in his pocket and gave Kermit a dime for his effort.

“Dad told him. ‘I believe you need it more than I do,’” Rex laughed.

Oliver more than evened the score, however. Oliver was the one who brought rainbow trout fingerlings and put them in Abrams Creek. Kermit pulled his share of 20-inch trout out of the cold mountain stream over the years.

“Dad enjoyed fishing more than hunting,” Rex said.

Living in the mountains wasn’t all work

Caughron said they’d often hike up to Abrams Falls.

“Another hike I liked was into Sugar Cove, above Mill Creek. Becky Cable had an orchard up there before my time,” he said. “I enjoyed that hike. It wasn’t a strenuous hike, but you wouldn’t run into nobody.”

Though his dad spent a lot of time at Gregory Bald herding cattle as a young man, Rex said he never much liked that hike himself.

“I only made it to Gregory three times in my life,” he said. “It wasn’t that hard of a walk, but I didn’t enjoy going to Gregory Bald.”

He said those who visit the Cove would do well to get off the paved path.

“There’s a lot of good views,” he said, “if you get down off the Loop Road, if you get down by the creek.”

His favorite view, though, is right at the entrance to the Cove, a place he calls Horseshoe Mountain.

“Look to the left, look right over the stables and you can see it,” he said. “It looks like a horseshoe. They don’t call it a horseshoe, though. They call it Mollies Butt.”

“I like to stand there and just look.” 

Traffic along Cades Cove loop road
Today, Cades Cove is one of the most-visited parts of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (photo by Daniel Munson/TheSmokies.com)

Who was the last person to live in Cades Cove?

Kermit Caughron died in April of 1999. He was the last resident of Cades Cove.

The evidence of most of Kermit’s existence has been erased from the Cove.

The cattle, a staple of Cove visits of my youth, are gone. So is Kermit’s house, which he built in 1952 with materials salvaged from the old Cable School which themselves had been salvaged from the earlier Laurel Springs school.

Some of the older buildings on the property, the smokehouse and the original cabin, remain.

However, park officials wanted to take the Cove back to its earlier roots, more like the world of Kermit’s parents and their parents than his own.

Marking the spot where Kermit and Lois lived now is an old apple tree and a handful of lilies that bloom in the spring. 

Why is Cades Cove famous?

Today, Cades Cove is one of the most popular destinations for visitors to the Smoky Mountains.

Guests come to the Cove to explore cabins, churches, the grist mill and view wildlife. They can drive the Cades Cove Loop Road, view log homes and get a glimpse of what life might have been like for the early settlers in the mountains.

What is your favorite part about visiting Cades Cove? Let us know in the comments below.

28 thoughts on “Cades Cove History: The Last Family To Have Lived in Cades Cove”

  1. I am so proud to be a member of this family’s tree.caughron is an extension of the original Scottish MacEacain or MacEachain name. There are many variations of spellings. I have hoped to meet Ruth Caughron Davis one day. We are both getting on in age, so we need to meet soon.

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  2. I had the pleasure of meeting Kermit, i believe it was 1995 his garden was up and I told him he had a good looking garden and told him how mine was a disappointment. Kermit introduced himself and asked if I’d ever had a white cucumber and I stated that I had not heard of them, he then picked one fresh and gave it to me to eat then he proceeded to give me a bag of white cucumber seeds and told me to come back and see him and let him know how they did. I regretfully never made it back over to see Kermit, but then a few years later I heard of his death.

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  3. Love this story is it in pamphlet or book form to buy ? My family went for many years and always stopped and talked with the caughron s and bought honey

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  4. I live in NW Georgia and I am also a descendant of the Sheilds family. I have loved Cade’s Cove since I was little and there are times I would drive up and ride through the Cove several times. It always felt like home.

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  5. I met Mr.Kermit a couple years before his death. He was a very sweet and funny man. Showed me his garden and told me his birthday was coming up and he would be 85. So glad I got to meet him. I go back to his home place every time I’m in the Cove. Nice memory.

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    • My cousin and I walked up to the old apple tree one day and was just remembering where the house used to sit. I looked down right near the the bottom of the tree I saw something sticking out of the dirt and covered with leaves. I pulled it out and it was an old leather boot/shoe sole. I wanted to think it was one that was left from the time Kermit lived there. Such a neat find and I put it back. That’s where it belonged. It was a special find I thought and just made me feel like I had just met someone. I remember seeing their house sitting up there. I was sad when it was taken down. Such memories.

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  6. Loved the account. It was very interesting. It made it even more real to hear about ones who lived there & the one telling the account had himself lived there. Very well done 👏.

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  7. I loved this story. I have traced my ancestry back to the Cable’s. I love going to the Cove. It feels like home.

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  8. I love this article on Cades Cove and it’s history. It is such a beautiful place. I love to drive through and visit the old home places.

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  9. Me and my husband would always ride up to cade cove just to have lunch picnic and dtay all day then when we.had our son and grandchildren we did the same thing now my great grandchildren are going and love it thank you all for preserving i

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  10. My favorite place! It is so crowded now I hope people don’t ruin it by leaving their trash. We always see bear when we go. It’s so peaceful even with all the traffic. I tell my husband I think I lived there in a previous life, there’s just something about being there that calls to me.

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  11. The first white settlers were John and Luranie Oliver. They came from Carter County after being approached by William Tipton to settle in this new wilderness. Their cabin was 50 yards behind the Oliver cabin we see now that was built later as a honeymoon cabin for their children. Cases Cove wouldn’t have been what it became without them. I know this because I am John and Luranie’s fifth great granddaughter.

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  12. When we visit the Cove we feel a peacefulness settle over us, what a great place I could just move into the center and live out the rest of my life there easily.

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  13. When I was in the Boy Scouts , each summer we would hike for a week on the Appalachian Trail. I guess it was about 1955 we were hiking thru the smokies and one of our overnight camps was Gregory bald above Cades Cove. We spent 2 days there and on the second day a couple of men and boys came into the camp. they were residents of Cades Cove and had hiked up and were going to open the night there . To our surprise, they had brought baking potatoes and had a bunch of extra which they shared with and boy were they good because we had been eating about the same thing for a number of days. they were really nice people and I always enjoyed going to Cades Cove and thinking about them . Great times !!!

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  14. I remember the house we began going to the Smokies in 1972 and went at least two times a year for quiet some time. I remember there being nothing but cattle in the field of the loop road. We stopped going going around 2002 but my husband died in 2019 and my son took me back through the loop road again after all those years and I saw turkey’s not vultures cause you rarely see them now. I also saw white tail deer, black bear and a squirrel. I see all these animals in my yard most everyday except for the black bear. I am from east central Alabama and we are running over with white tail deer. I love visiting the park I just wish visitors would please follow the rules number one “DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE” number two don’t block the road. Remember there are thousands of people there just like you to enjoy themselves and don’t take the additude this is my turn I will take as long as I please. They’re just to many people in the park these days. Also remember it is free to everyone but that could change and that would be a sad day in the history of the southeast greatest treasure. Thanks for reading, everyone go and enjoy.

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  15. I cooked for the movie a walk in the spring rain with Ingrid bergman and Anthony Quinn I was 18 with several other people I think Mrs Bergman was a wonderful person had a few walks from time to time in the cove were the movie was shot with her I grew up in blount county with lots of stories to tell when we owned an interest in Tuckaleechee Retreat Center in dry valley just on the other side of rich mountain over looking cades cove every one should stay there sometime in there life at this Retreat center tell them Richard Anderson said hello rent the movie you’ll love it

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  16. I was born in Cades Cove, a grand son Of George and (Tuckaleechee Burchfield), Tipton. My Mother was Charlotte Tipton, father was Bert Riddle, better known as Aunt Lottie and Uncle Bert to my Many cousins who were also born in Cades Cove

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  17. I met mr kirmett one visit to cades cove he was standing by a fence across from His cabin he gave me a brief story of what happened to the other Residence A story that forever changed how I seen cades cove this visit was many years ago a couple years later after that visit I went back and the home he lived in was still standing but at the gate was a reef hanging at that point I knew he had passed it was a pleasure meeting him

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