Cades Cove Menu Guide
1. Settling Cades Cove Tn | 2. Sparks Lane | 3. John Oliver Place
4. Primitive Baptist Church | 5. Methodist Church | 6. Hyatt Lane
7. Missionary Baptist Church | 8. Cades Cove Road (Rich Mountain Road)
9. Cooper Road Trail | 10. Elijah Oliver Place
11. Cable Mill Area | 12. Henry Whitehead Place
13. Cades Cove Nature Trail | 14. Hyatt Lane | 15. Dan Lawson Place
16. Tipton Place | 17. Carter Shields Cabin | 18. Sparks Lane

17 - CARTER SHIELDS CABIN

Your journey is almost ended. Among the things you saw were part of the finest collection of log buildings in this country and the miscellaneous tools and trappings of an organic society. They tell you much, but not everything, about those people.

You saw little evidence of extraneous finery, for this was a culture of limited supply and minimum waste. But esthetic pleasure was not unknown or unappreciated. The craftsman found beauty in a well-shaped axe handle or smoothly-adzed parlor beam.

The woman expressed herself in a quilt or woven bed coverlet. The object itself was necessary; its beauty was not, but was there nonetheless. Design and function became one through understanding of the materials at one’s fingertips.

A sense of community filled the Cove. For one hundred years life in the Cove proceeded at a pace rarely faster than a walk. This allowed time to see and hear the world one lived in. Cowbells in the pasture, the almost-silent chatter of a horsedrawn mowing machine, the wind coming up, and the sun going down. A decent “howdy” while walking past a neighbor’s house. All were part of that life.

Community involvement on a personal level was a clearly understood obligation. It activated almost automatically in cases where family independence was inadequate.

A death in the community brought many people together quickly and efficiently. One made the coffin, another lined it with cloth, while others dug the grave. Common understanding got the deceased in the ground within twenty-four hours.

A house raising was another common effort. One man simply couldn’t lift and lay the logs alone. When all of the materials were assembled on the site, neighbors pitched in to raise the building quickly.

These and other qualities of our ancestral society cannot be put on display. They can only be understood through deliberate contemplation. We leave this last little cabin to your imagination. Rebuild, refurnish, and re-people it in your own mind, and let it say to you whatever it will.

Cades Cove Menu Guide
1. Settling Cades Cove Tn | 2. Sparks Lane | 3. John Oliver Place
4. Primitive Baptist Church | 5. Methodist Church | 6. Hyatt Lane
7. Missionary Baptist Church | 8. Cades Cove Road (Rich Mountain Road)
9. Cooper Road Trail | 10. Elijah Oliver Place
11. Cable Mill Area | 12. Henry Whitehead Place
13. Cades Cove Nature Trail | 14. Hyatt Lane | 15. Dan Lawson Place
16. Tipton Place | 17. Carter Shields Cabin | 18. Sparks Lane