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History of Buffalo Cove

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

Rich in beauty, steeped in folklore and almost untouched by tiem, Buffalo Cove on the Cumberland Plateau offers visitors a close encounter with nature at her unspoiled best. Approaching the Cove, the landscape becomes a succession of flat green pastures and scruffy pine forests. Slowly, gentle rolling hills appear on the horizon. Pastures give way to cool-smelling pine thickets closing in to shade the road for several miles. Then suddenly a flood of sunlight breaks through as the road leaves the dim forest and emerges on the edge of a flame-colored, sky-level sandstone bluff. The breath-taking vista below is Buffalo Cove. Winding down into the lush valley toward the base of the cliffs brings rolling hills and talus slopes into view to form a sensuously undulating landscape in colors ranging from pale straw, to vivid green, to deep purple. The road twists and turns to the valley floor where rushing mountain streams bordered by cobblestones dance through vivid green pastures.

The untamed, untouched appearance of the countryside seduces newcomes into fantasies of the lands's history. Could it have been any more beautiful when native Americans lived here hundreds of years ago? Old-timers and historians believe that it has changed little since the days when indians came to hunt the game that fed on dense thickets of cane at the foot of the plateau. The hunters also found shelter in the caves and wind-breaking rock formations that dot the hillsides.

Early white settlers followed, making their homes in the canebrakes, which later became the first farms of Fentress County. As new vegetable varieties were introduced from the deep South, agriculture expanded and the land become an even richer resource of feed. But even at the height of the area's population in those days, it was never more than sparsely settled because families were drawn to the big rivers where transportation of goods and supplies was less troublesome and more reliable. Eventually, even the Indians abandoned Buffalo Cove. In time it became hunting and warring grounds used sporadically by various tribes in the Tennessee and Kentucky area.

With the advent of land grants to United States citizens, deeds were first offered in the area (then called Rock House Creek) in 1825. Many locations further west of the Cumberland Platuea had already been settled by that time, but the countryside surrounding Buffalo Cove remained a wilderness removed far from 'civilization.' This endeared it to rugged individualists like Davy Crockett who lived near the mouth of the Cove in 1817. Even by the time the Civil War began the area was still wild, untamed country populated only by a few stoutt-hearted settlers living miles apart.

The plateau farmers, unlike the owners of large river valley farms below, raised only small table gardens to supplement the abundant supply of game and fish available. This meant there was no reason to use slaves to work the land, so it is not surprising that these independent settlers were sympathetic to the North, even though they were surrounded by people willing to secede from the Union.

In the wilderness of the Cumberland Plateau, the War was fought much like battles in Viet Nam. CGuerilla tactics were used to attack government outposts and private citizens whose loyalties were well known. A cave on the grounds near where Beggar's Castle stands today was a potassiium ntitrate mine used to make gunpowder. The ambusihings and bushwhackings that comprised Civil War fighting in the area became the subject of many legends and folk songs that are still being handed down from one Buffalo Cove generation to another.

After the War, the homesteads of the Cove gave way to land speculators who bought and sold large portions of the valley. One of the earliest of theses was John M Clemens, father of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain.

Over the years forests of the cove have been cut for timber and hillsides have been dug for coal, but today these activities have slowed considerably. The people of Buffalo Cove now look forward to renewable resources, such as tourism.