Cades Cove is home to lots of incredible sights from the scenery to the wildlife all the way to the historic cabins and homeplaces. One of many cabins that visitors can visit while driving through is John Olivers Cabin which is the first cabin and homeplace on the loop.
The exhibit was made possible by a grant from the company Aurora Foods, which are the makers of Log Cabin Syrup.
John Oliver’s Cabin is one of the oldest cabins in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The exact year that the cabin was built is unknown, but it was built in the early 1820’s.
The Oliver’s were some of the first Euro-Americans to settle inside Cades Cove. The John and Lucretia Oliver arrived in Cades Cove in 1818.
The cabin was built with surprisingly no nails or pegs but instead was built with the help of gravity. The Oliver’s used notched corners to make the cabin stand upright. This helped to weatherproof the cabin since they could place chinking materials between the cabin’s wooden slats. Each of the cabin’s 3,000 shakes (wooden shingles) were made by hand and the doors to the cabin were built small to help conserve the heat and to minimize having to cut the structural logs.
Members of the Oliver family lived here in the Cove for centuries until the land was sold to the government for the National Park.
To this day millions of visitors of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and visitors of Cades Cove can truly appreciate and admire the hard work that John and the Olivers put into this cabin and the next time you put that delicious Log Cabin Syrup on your pancakes be sure to remember their generosity for giving their grant for John Oliver’s Cabin!
Gracie Latrelle 
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