Geographically, Cocke County lies hard against the mountain range that was to become the western boundary of North Carolina and being on the edge of the great East Tennessee Valley, it received its share of migrating emigrants down the valley from out of Virginia and over the mountain from North Carolina, therefore making the history of Cocke County an essential part of the history of the advancing frontier. Few States in the American Union can boast of a more colorful or more significant history than that of Tennessee and none more interesting than the early history of Cocke County.
Once a part of North Carolina, Called the State of Franklin, then a part of Jefferson County, Tennessee, Cocke came to its own in 1797 and was named after William Cocke, a political figure and very instrumental figure in the forming of this part of East Tennessee. The history of Cocke County really begins soon after the first treaty with the Cherokee Indians and the English in 1721. The stories of virgin forest and great rivers and streams, and rich bottom lands carried back to Pennsylvania, Vermont, the Virginias, and North Carolina by early discoverers, began the movement of adventurers, hunters, and homesteaders looking for fertile farmlands and new settlements.
This also was the rich hunting grounds of the Cherokee Indians essential to the Cherokee existence. So began years of bloody conflicts between the Cherokees and the homesteaders. Little by little the boundaries of the United States was drawn, shrinking the territory of the Cherokee Indians. A process that finally lead to the removal of most Cherokees to Oklahoma in 1838 along the tragic "Trail of Tears". Those Cherokees that chose to stay in the Great Smoky Mountains were permitted to do so and eventually were given their rights to land now known as the Cherokee Reservation, locat ed in Cherokee, North Carolina, just over the mountain from Tennessee.
The Scotch-Irish were always the roamers and adventurers, and the early settlers of Cocke County were made up mostly of the Scotch-Irish decents with a few Dutch and Germans here and there. These second and third generations finally reached the valley and mountains discovering and settling the most rugged country with the most isolated conditions possible, but where individual liberty was their reward. By any standard, most of the early families were poor. Many came to the new land over the mountains with only the clothes on their backs. Maybe a rifle, an axe, powder, or cooking pots. Some came on horseback, others on foot leading a pack horse. Tired and eager, they found their place. With only hand tools they cut the trees for their cabins. They cleared the rich land for planting. They chose their leaders, built their towns, their churches, and the schools. The mills where built along the river.
This was no easy task. Besides the construction of the house itself, there had to be a sufficient head of water dammed up to turn the heavy stones. The stones themselves had to be made and set in place. This was done with only a hammer and cold chis el. The mill was the most important center of every settlement. The towns grew and new merchants developed. Soon many shops, a blacksmith shop, and a general store where added. In those early days these early merchants hauled their goods in wagons. Most of the merchandise retailed in this area was purchased chiefly in Philadelphia and New York, then shipped by wagon to Baltimore and then wagoned through the valley of Virgina and then up over the mountains into East Tennessee towns. Sometimes it was boated from the place of purchase to Richmond, VA, then wagoned from there. Either way, the transportation of goods was slow, costly, and more often than not, unreliable.
Merchandise ordered didn't always get to its destination. The need for a quick and more reliable form of transportation began the construction of the southern railway systems. The first was the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, developing from Knoxville southward with connections farther south and west. At the same time the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad Company laid a railroad from Lynchburg, Virginia to Bristol, Tennessee. With the completion of these two rail systems the manufacturing cent ers in the north and east and the rural areas south and west were now connected. It would be 20 years later before the railroad reach and serviced Cocke County.
During the Civil War construction of the rail systems came to a standstill and the existing railways were used purely for military purposes. But immediately after the war ended, the railroad companies began again to lay rails and developing new routes. The railroad's route followed the old French Broad River route, from northwest of Cincinnati, Ohio, though the Cumberland Gap and onto Charleston. The route through Tennessee stopped at Wolf Creek, leaving a gap in the tracks from Wolf Creek, Tennessee to Old Fort North Carolina.
This dilemma tells an interesting story. The Western North Carolina Railroad was revived after the war and during this time of reconstruction, the Railroad found a maze of financial confusion, fraud, and general upheaval to deal with. Also after the war ended, North Carolina withdrew the bonds that had been issued to pay for the completion of the railroad and to pay the wages of the workers, already hired. So the Western North Carolina Railroad Company struggled along until 1875 when the State of North Carolina purchase the company. The state of North Carolina now faced half excavated tunnels and ruined culverts, among other problems. To deal with this problem an act of the state legislature provided that, " The warden of the Penitentiary, shall from time to time, as the governor directs, send to the president of said company all convicts who have not been farmed out, to labor on said railroad. Also, said warden would provide clothing, food, and guards while the prisoners were working on the railroad."
With the state furnishi ng the labor a contract to finish the railroad across the mountain was given to J.W. Wilson Company. It took three years to complete the rails to Asheville, North Carolina. The prisoners where armed only with picks and shovels, carts and mules and yet they faced and conquered some of the most terrifying obstacles. One such obstacle was a three mile sharp ascent of 1100 vertical feet. In one area the workman hand drilled through the hard rock and removed 80,000 cubic yards of the rock, when they did this a massive slide of 110,000 cubic yards of soft rock and earth rolled down in a thunder of devastation, wiping out all signs of human life. They began again. This time the loose earth, soaked by rain became a jelly-like mass. It seemed to boil up under the tracks. Sometimes in the mornings the level of the tracks was raised as much as twenty feet higher than they were the night before. It was a backbreaking and often spirit-breaking work. The peak of the hardship was near the summit of t he Blue Ridge. The drilling of the Swannanoa tunnel, 1,832 feet long. Delays in its building due to slides cost over half a million dollars and one hundred and twenty lives, which gave rise to the saying that the train came to Asheville before the railroad.
Because the Wilson Company held some of its rights by virtue of an agreement to have a locomotive reach Asheville by a certain date, and very apparent that the work on the tunnel would go much faster if attached by both ends, Major Wilson hauled his locomotive across the mountain on improvised tracks. Tracks were laid and the locomotive was hauled by teams of mules and oxen, helped by the convict force. The locomotive was halted and the track behind would be torn up and relayed in front and then the locomotive would continue. This was done until finally they crested the Blue Ridge and broke the morning silence with a boisterous blow of the locomotive's whistle. With the workers drilling the tunnel from both ends it finally was compl eted. It would be another two years before the railroad completed it course to join with the western link at the Tennessee state line, but the dream of three quarters of a century was finally realized and the unsung heros are five hundred or more nameless convicts that gave their lives to complete it.
Through the years Cocke County has seen a lot of growth in a vast range of enterprises. In the 1800's John Stokely started a family business in farming and shipping his produce all over the country. Later after his death, his wife Anna and two of her sons started a small cannery and many years later with the purchase of the Van Camp Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, watched their company grow into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Today, Newport, the county seat of Cocke County, is the home of Quaker Oats, who purchased the Stokely-Van Camp Company, and Great Lakes Chemical Company.
Throughout Cocke County you will find many entrepreneurs engaged in unique skills and trades, some unlike any found anywhere else in the world. All helping to carve out their own little part of history. The Civil War was often called, the brothers war, but that was more prevalent in East Tennessee than in any other southern state. The mountain people of East Tennessee were cruelly divided in their loyalties. Among the reasons for this division was often geographic and economic but ethical and religious certainties were often the most apparent and cherished causes. Those who joined with the rest of Tennessee in resisting forced union, gave the familiar cries of freedom. In the choice of mother state or mother country, they clung to the more familiar. Loyalty to state was strong and the very principal cause of the whole war, the relations of the separate states to the nation. Those who defied community, state and region and cast their support to the Union worked from a traditional way of thinking. In 1808 the Methodists in East Tennessee had taken a vocal stand against slavery. With the further influence of Quaker and Presbyterian belief, groups formed spreading the message advocati ng emancipation. When the war broke out, it was from these groups that the first Union Volunteers came. So throughout the mountains you found one brother wearing blue while the other wore gray. Neighbors fighting neighbors.
The year 1864 came to an end, and with it the hopes of the Confederate States of America. Grief for those sons and father that died in battle, fear of neighbors who stood with "the enemy", agony over personal possessions lost or stolen was not so easily stacked away as a gun. A truce was signed in April 9, 1865, but it was months before some of the Tennessee companies heard about it and ceased fighting and disbanded their companies. It was years before some of the defeated could return with ease to their home and generations before the smell of spilled blood could be diluted in memory. But as sure as the mountain water rushes on, as so the lives of the mountain people. War ended and another cycle of human renewal begins in this part of the south.
If the way a man earns his living is the measure by which he spends his life, no place is so diversified as this beautiful county surrounded by snow tip mountains, lush valleys, and rushing mountain rivers and streams. The mountain "watering holes" once attracted visitors from all over. One of the most famous was Carson Springs in Cocke County, and Sulphur Springs was once a health resort. As in those early days the mountain ranges and the rivers such as the French Broad and Pigeon River provide recreation to the local people as well as to the thousand of tourists that visit the Cherokee National Forest and the Great Smoky National Park, with river rafting, parks, hiking, and miles upon miles of natural untouched beauty. It would be difficult to find anyone in Cocke County that didn't have farming in their family history.
Even today, tobacco and corn are the top products of Cocke County. Yet the mountains provide a unique lifestyle to these Cockecountians. You find nestled in the mountain individual communities such as Del Rio, Parrottsville, Cosby, Hartford and Bybee only to name a few. Once these communities were isolated from one another because of long distances over treacherous roads. This created the need to develop various enterprises to provide the needs of the local community. So grew these early entrepreneurs providing everything from clothing to horseshoing. One such community of Cocke County has had its story told on national television. The story of a young school teacher from Asheville, North Carolina, who came to the mountains to teach its children. It's the story of Catherine Marshall's mother, Christy. The mission site is still there, although the church has been moved a ways down the mountain. But you can ride up that valley, known then and now as Cutter's Gap, and stand on the site of the mission, even have a picnic if you like. You'll find a warm w elcome by the people there.
Today blacktop roads and highways have connected these communities and made possible, quick access to the big city of Newport for shopping, the doctor, or whatever business you might need to do, yet Cocke County communities spread about the mountains have maintained their individual charm and each offers surprising opportunities. You can find old mansions being turned into Bed & Breakfast, like The Christopher, once the Issac's summer mansion. You can find quilt makers selling their beautiful handmade quilts. Handmade dulcimers are made and sold right here in these mountains. You haven't heard music until you hear the beautiful dulcimer music. Furniture hand crafted for generations. Orchards, producing some of the best fruits and vegetables around.
But best of all, you are only a look away to feast upon the clear skies that embraces the mountain ranges. You can take a deep breath, close your eyes and for a moment feel what that first mountaineer must have fe lt as he came up over that ridge from North Carolina and saw this rich valley lined with mountains down below him. Possibilities are endless for Cocke County. It has much to offer to the future. As their ancestors, Cockecountian's community and church are very important to them. They have inherited the will for an honest life, believing that you create your own opportunity, and opportunity for growth is knocking on their door everyday.
The mountains and the rivers might bring you to Cocke County, but the friendly people will make you want to stay.