Cades Cove pictures

[Roundman]

[HaMeR]

Very nice pics!! That barn is really cool. 

[Jimmie in Ky]

Old double crib with loft added later. now that is cool. Never saw one added to that way before. The deer pics aint bad either  Jimmie

[pitw]

Neat pics for a fact but they ask more questions than they answer .  Did someone move the building and then not need it What`s the little brown fuzz ballÉ(that is my question mark).  Why are the top row of shakes stuck over the roofÉ.

[Hawks Feather]

Neat pictures and the ones of the deer are pretty good.  Looks like you could have gotten a couple of them with a bow.  The barn is interesting.  Is it (was it) designed for anything special?  It seems like it would be a pretty good sized storage area for no more critters than a person could put in the bottom.

Jerry

[FinsnFur]

I enjoyed that little trip.
Thanks for posting those Roundy

[Bills Custom Calls]

Yes sir Nice pics indeed Thanks for sharing them with us

[Bopeye]

Very nice Mike.  I love that place myself. I take it you didn't see any bears? They may be starting to hole up for the winter, whatchya think.

[Roundman]

  The barn is interesting.  Is it (was it) designed for anything special?  It seems like it would be a pretty good sized storage area for no more critters than a person could put in the bottom.

Jerry

I think back when these barns were built not many farmers provided shelter for their animals. I believe they used the underside to work the grain. That's what I was told anyway.
If they would let me bow hunt I dang sure would. You get caught hunting in the GSM's they don't just take your gun. They take your gun, truck, and house. It's a big NO NO.

Very nice Mike.  I love that place myself. I take it you didn't see any bears? They may be starting to hole up for the winter, whatchya think.

No bear. Got out of the truck and took a walk through the woods and didn't see any. The family didn't come with me so I stayed as long as I wanted. 

[CCP]

Mike I like the pictures the camera you have is marvelous. 

Been along time since I have drove through the cove and this makes me want to go back. This is a great time of year to be there.

Old double crib with loft added later. now that is cool. Never saw one added to that way before.

Jimmy it maybe an original design.. Reason I say that is while I was mapping power lines up that way there where alot of those scattered around.  There are 3 just like that on one road just Northeast of Tazwell TN.

[HaMeR]

 

Why are the top row of shakes stuck over the roofÉ. 

Barry-- That is just one way of capping off the ridge many years ago. The prevailing winds would blow the rain & snow over the top & the extra height of the top row would ensure the rain or snow would not fall down in to the open ridge. That is what I read on a plaque on an old mountain home down on North Carolina when we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachian Mtns.
 

[pitw]

Why are the top row of shakes stuck over the roofÉ. 

Barry-- That is just one way of capping off the ridge many years ago. The prevailing winds would blow the rain & snow over the top & the extra height of the top row would ensure the rain or snow would not fall down in to the open ridge. That is what I read on a plaque on an old mountain home down on North Carolina when we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachian Mtns.
 

Thanks Glen.  I thought that may be the case but up here the wind can come from any direction in a hurry so they wouldn`t last the first year.

[HaMeR]

We have the same winds here Barry. I'm thinking this might be a mountain thing where the winds are more predictable. 

[coyotehunter_1]

Mike, those pics are great 

I think you will find that style barn has a neat history; 

CANTILEVER BARNS

Cantilever barns are nineteenth-century vernacular farm structures found principally in two East Tennessee counties, Sevier and Blount. Their characteristic feature is an overhang, or cantilever, which supports a large second-story loft atop one or more log cribs on the base story. In studies of mountain buildings made in the early 1960s, Henry Glassie identified these barns as characteristic of the southern highlands, indicating that they were found in North Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In the 1980s fieldwork by Marian Moffett and Lawrence Wodehouse found only six cantilever barns in Virginia and another three in North Carolina. By contrast, 316 cantilever barns were located in East Tennessee, with 183 in Sevier County, 106 in Blount County, and the remaining twenty-seven scattered from Johnson to Bradley Counties.

A cantilever barn usually has two log cribs, each measuring about twelve feet by eighteen feet and separated by a fourteen- to sixteen-foot driveway. The topmost logs of each crib extend eight to ten feet out to the barn's sides, becoming the cantilevered primary supports for a whole series of long secondary cantilevers which run from front to back across the entire length of the barn. A heavy timber frame, aligned over the corners of the cribs and the outer ends of the cantilevers, supports eave beams and heavy purlins, which are the major structural features of the loft. Most barns have a gable roof. Lofts were originally used for storing hay, loaded conveniently from wagons pulled into the driveway between the cribs. Cribs were livestock pens, while the sheltered area under the overhanging loft provided space for storing equipment and grooming animals. Barns still in active use now tend to be used for drying burley tobacco. Most have concealed their distinctive structures behind later enclosures and extensions and so are not obvious from the roadside.

Documentary evidence on these barns is very scarce. Most seem to have been built from 1870 to about 1915, by second- or third-generation settlers. Cantilever barns were constructed on self-sufficient farms, where accommodations for seed corn, feed, livestock, and equipment were basic needs. The unusual design may derive from German forebay barns in Pennsylvania, built into the hillside with an overhang along the out-facing side. Pioneer blockhouses in East Tennessee and elsewhere had modest overhangs on all four sides of the upper story, and these may have inspired the shape of later barns.

Moffett and Wodehouse have hypothesized that the barns' form was an invention, pulling together ideas from several sources into an original design that enjoyed local popularity for thirty to fifty years. Cantilever barns used readily available tools, materials, and construction techniques to meet practical needs. A rainy mountain climate with high humidity for much of the year makes protection from damp a continuing challenge, which this design meets nicely. Rain falling on a cantilever barn's roof drips off the eaves at a distance well removed from the supporting cribs; the overhang protects both structure and livestock, while the space between the cribs works with the continuous vents in the upper loft walls to encourage air circulation, drying the loft's contents.

The most accessible cantilever barns are preserved at the Cable Mill and Tipton Homeplace in Cades Cove of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Two others are owned by the Museum of Appalachia in Norris.

Marian Moffett, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Suggested Reading(s): Marian Moffett and Lawrence Wodehouse, East Tennessee Cantilever Barns (1993).

More:
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=C027
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Sidebar:
This article mentions John Rice Irwin's Museum of Appalachia in Norris. I would highly recommend anyone interested in early American history (especially Appalachia) to pay them a visit. Just seeing the pioneer muzzle loader firearm exhibit is worth the trip, IMHO.   

Chet 

[KySongDog]

Cades Cove is a great place to visit.  Thanks for those pics, Mike.   Brings back some memories.  I haven't been there in a long time. 

[bambam]

Awesome pics, thanks for sharing.

[Hawks Feather]

Thanks for the info on the barn.  I had never seen or heard anything about them before.

Jerry

[Jimmie in Ky]

Thanks for the info Chet. I had never seen such construction here that ws original. I have seen s number of tobacco barns that were sheded onto at a later date but not cantilevered. I have seen the top plates extended to sixteen to twenty feet on each end and sawn lumber used to frame up the side sheds. Sixty foot top plates were something to see. Hasn't been timbers like that avavilable here in decades.

That one was built for corn cribs and hay, no doubt about that. If it had been to shelter stock the chinks would have been filled in. Left open like that they were for drying grain and keeping it that way.

Been thinking about this thread since I saw it. Wondering if I can use this sweetgum in such a manner. Such a style would keep it dry and free of any moisture. Be a good use for this worthless timber. Jimmie

[Bopeye]

Why would you chink it for holding animals Jimmie? I've seen chickens, sheep, and hogs kept in far less suitable shelters than that. I would keep my gameroosters in an all wire round pen and throw a mat on top. Just wondering.

[Jimmie in Ky]

Around here they chinked with split logs to cut down on drafts some. Never saw one with mud in the walls like they did houses.  I have seen a good number of these old barns and cribs. Construction was fairly easy and straightforward. Shame is htey are disapearing at a fast rate now. Disrepair being the main culprit, they are rotting at the corners from roof damage. I do know of one good tobacco barn still standing, or at least it was last time I was thorugh there about 3 years ago. It was V nothc instead of dove tail construction.

I am still amazed at what they did with a plumbline, hatchet , Axe, adze and square. Oh , and a brace and bit for boring holes for pegs to hold top plates and rafters down. Just a few simple tools and a whole set of farm buildings were hewn from the timbers at hand.  Jimmie