Customer Reviews

Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community 1818-1937

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I've long been interested in Cades Cove history. As a native East Tennessean, I grew up with the many stories in legends that came from the area. Dunn, grandson of the last man to leave the cove, uses town records and family stories to paint a vivid account of life in the area. Dunn addresses many of the misconceptions about the town and shows a town of people that struggled from the town's beginning to the forced withdrawal to build the Great Smokies National Park. This book will most appeal to scholars, but anyone interested in Southern history would also enjoy it. Highly recommended.

I have visited Cades Cove over 10 times and still find something interesting on each trip. This book was extremely insightful because I actually knew many of the names in the book and the places discussed. If you've never been to the area, you may find the book less insightful though. I love Cades Cove, and I loved this book.

After a trip to Cades Cove and Townsend to research my family tree I was intrigued by the area. Mr. Dunn's work on Cades Cove presents the history of the area in a well-researched yet enjoyable manner. I read the book in a sitting. I would really like to know more about the Chestnut Flats area!

As an academic review of the life, sociology, and culture of the people who lived in Cades Cove from 1812 - 1937, Mr. Dunn did a good job. But the book lacks a strong narrative that carries the reader away into the "life" of the Cove. That is not surprising for an academic review such as this book is. There are scattered throughout the book wonderful little glimpses of life in the Cove, but I was hoping to get more of a feeling of the individuals who lived there. The last two chapters came closest to that by covering much of the life of the last John Oliver to live in the Cove. I visited the Cove in the Summer of 2009 and as I visited the historic exhibits I wondered what it must have been like to live in a community like this. Dunn's last chapter of the book describing the "Death by Eminent Domain" made my heart ache for those people who lost so much when the state of Tennessee took their community away from them to give the land to the National Park Service.

As an east Tennessee native and a direct descendant of a Cades Cove family, this is one of the best and most complete books depicting the life and culture of this unique mountain community.

My mother was born and raised in the Witt Shields house pictured on p55. She, and many other families were evicted when the Park Service took over the area in the late 1930's. Her home was since demolished, but I remember visiting it many times as a youngster in the 1950's. The shields family was a significant part of Cades Cove heritage.

In opposition to Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders (1913), Dunn correctly argues that leadership and a sense of community was strong in Cades Cove and that development there was not idiosyncratic but followed regional patterns. The chaos that accompanied the Civil War proved to be the watershed that burned "diversity and innovation" (145) from the Cove. Yet even so, family life at the turn of the century "was largely indistinguishable from that of other rural Tennesseans." (200)

Although the book is well researched and nicely written, the chapters seem to have been composed independently, which results in some repetition. Also a better acquaintance with the history of American religion would have limited the author's surprise at progressivism and religious fundamentalism walking hand-in-hand.

I ordered the book "Cades Cove Life Death Southern Appalachian Community" for my sister Wendy for her belated birthday last September and she loves it! I've been to Cades Cove in June 1960 when I was a little nine year old boy and I loved it1 I've never been back there since even though I've always wanted to go back there and still do. I've been to other places similar to Cades Cove such as Hale Farm & Village in Bath, Ohio; Philipsburg Manor in Tarrytown, New York; Carroll County Farm Museum in Maryland; Fruitlands in Massachusetts and Hancock Shaker Village also in Massachusetts within the past 20 years. Wendy finds this book on Cades Cove very informative and exciting.

Lots of good information. We have visited the Cove quite a few times over the years and still enjoy it very much each time, but it's much more interesting, learning some of the history behind it and knowing about how the settlers lived.

It was all and more than I anticipated. If you want to know about Cades Cove this is a good book.

We vacationed in Pigeon Forge, TN and visited Cade's Cove for the day. What a beautiful place! My husband was so interested in the history of Cade's Cove, I ordered this book for him. He read it and loved it.