census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the count ...
(CDP) and
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
of
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
. The population of the Cosby CDP according to the 2020 census was 807. The community has given its name to the northeastern section of the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, w ...
, which forms its southern boundary. Cosby's zip code also extends to into Sevier County, and borders the town of Pittman Center.
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,201 people, 2,091 households, and 1,525 families residing in the Zip Code Tabulation Area for the zip code (37722) that serves Cosby and a large surrounding area of rural land. The racial makeup of this area was 98.8%
White
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...
Asian
Asian may refer to:
* Items from or related to the continent of Asia:
** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia
** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia
** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...
, and 0.2%
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
. Hispanics and Latinos comprise 0.9% of the population.
Of the 2,091 households, 31.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 56.8% were married couples living together, 11.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.1% were non-families. 22.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 21.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.49 and the average family size was 2.89.
76.2% of the population was 18 years of age or older with 14.4% being 62 years of age or older. The median age was 38.1 years. The population was 48.1% male and 51.9% female.
The median income for a household in the area was $26,533, and the median income for a family was $30,444. The
per capita income
Per capita income (PCI) or total income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. It is calculated by dividing the area's total income by its total population.
Per capita i ...
for the city was $12,992. About 9.2% of families and 12.4% of the population were below the
poverty line
The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for t ...
.
Geography
Cosby is located at (35.8172, -83.2469 on the northwest fringe of the
Great Smoky Mountains
The Great Smoky Mountains (, ''Equa Dutsusdu Dodalv'') are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains, and form part of the Blue Ridge ...
. The community is spread out over a narrow valley that runs from Allen Grove near Newport in the north to the border of the national park to the south.
English Mountain
English Mountain is a mountain located in the western foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains region of East Tennessee. Rising to a peak of 3,629 feet, it is known for offering scenic fall colors within a convenient drive from Knoxville.
A few ru ...
rises over 2,000 feet above Cosby to the northwest and Green Mountain rises just over 1,500 feet to the east. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is to the south and southwest with the community forming several segments of its boundary.
Cosby Creek, its source on the crest of the Smokies near Cammerer Ridge, is the valley's main watershed. The creek cuts through the valley, running roughly parallel to Tennessee Route 32/ U.S. Route 321 before turning east near Allen Grove and emptying into the Pigeon River.
Traditionally, Cosby has been divided into three sections of differing elevation, known simply as "Lower Cosby," "Middle Cosby," and "Upper Cosby." Lower Cosby is the northernmost section, roughly consisting of the area between the mouth of Cosby Creek along the Pigeon River and Jones Cove Road. Upper Cosby, most of which is now part of the national park, consists mainly of the area in the vicinity of the Cosby Campground.
U.S. Route 321 is the main road in Cosby, connecting the valley to Newport (10 miles to the north) and Gatlinburg (20 miles to the west). TN-339, which intersects US-321 near the center of Cosby, connects the valley with Jones Cove and
Sevierville
Sevierville ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Sevier County, Tennessee, located in eastern Tennessee. The population was 17,889 at the 2020 United States Census.
History
Native Americans of the Woodland period were among the first human ...
to the west. The easternmost segment of the Foothills Parkway intersects with U.S. Route 321 one quarter mile further south. TN-32 parallels US-321 through most of Cosby before splitting off and heading east to the Cosby section of the national park and onward to the Tennessee-North Carolina border.
History
Early history
For centuries, lands along the northern rim of the Great Smokies, including Cosby, were used primarily as hunting grounds by the
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...
. The first European settlers arrived in what is now Cocke County in the early 1780s. Among these settlers were John Gilliland (c. 1725-1798), who settled near the mouth of the Pigeon River, Peter Fine (1753–1826), who established Fine's Ferry at what is now Newport, and a small colony of German immigrants from Pennsylvania, who settled in what became known as the Dutch Bottoms area. Samuel Odell (c. 1750-1789) was probably the first to settle in the Cosby Creek valley.Goodspeed Publishing Company, "The History of Cocke County," ''Goodspeed's History of Tennessee'' (Nashville: C. and R. Elder Booksellers, 1972).
These early encroachments no doubt reduced wildlife numbers and agitated the Cherokee, who harassed the early settlers by harvesting from their livestock.
Fine's brother, Vinet, was killed while chasing a band of Cherokee in 1783. Scalpings were also reported. In response to these attacks, William Whitson (c. 1740/41-1819) erected a small fort just south of where Cosby Creek empties into the Pigeon River. The fort quickly grew into a small frontier outpost, complementing the fords and ferry to the north. While Cherokee raids continued, the Cosby area was largely peaceful by the early 19th century.
19th century
The origin of the name "Cosby" is a mystery, although there are two well-established hypotheses.
The first centers around an early trapper and distiller in the area named Jonathan Cosby (sometimes spelled "Cozby"). The second suggests that the creek and valley were named after Dr. James Cozby (c. 1752-1831), a Revolutionary War veteran and friend of
John Sevier
John Sevier (September 23, 1745 September 24, 1815) was an American soldier, frontiersman, and politician, and one of the founding fathers of the State of Tennessee. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, he played a leading role in Tennes ...
, who may have made early claims to land along the creek. In any case, the name appears as early as 1838 in the minutes of the Big Pigeon Church in reference to the Bethany Church that had recently been founded along "Cosby Creek."
Cocke County, like much of East Tennessee, was divided between
Union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
and
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
sentiments during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
. Like most mountain communities, Cosby was subject to raids throughout the war, especially from Confederate marauders crossing the mountains from North Carolina. A "home guard" camp was eventually established at the mouth of Indian Camp cree
In the late 19th century, Cosby slowly recovered from the effects of the war. The community benefited to some extent from the railroad stations established at Newport and Big Creek in 1867 and the 1870s, respectively. In the 1890s, a lumber mill was established at nearby Hartford, Tennessee, Hartford, adjacent to the Tennessee-North Carolina border.
Early 20th century
By 1900, most Cosby residents were either farmers or worked in lumber mills.
Some residents supplemented their income by gathering ginseng, evergreens, and moss in the mountains, and some distilled corn liquor. Religion was still of utmost importance.
Most church services were held once every month, usually in framed buildings. Mary Bell Smith, who grew up in Cosby in the 1920s, remembered:
Sermons were long and harrowing. In vivid language, the preacher painted Heaven and Hell, with considerably more emphasis on Hell than upon Heaven. I mentally pictured the Devil as a monstrous red animal with horns and a long tail, who carried a four-pronged pitchfork. For some reason, I believed he lived in the ground and could appear at will. The church had no organ or piano, so we sang without instruments.
With the construction of railroads between Newport and Hartford, the
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...
began to make its way to the Smokies. Electricity had arrived in the sawmill towns in the 1920s. Still, Cosby lagged behind. Although the Baptist Church Organization established Cosby Academy in 1913, most of Cosby's children received brief instruction in rudimentary schoolhouses. Mary Bell Smith recalled:
The one-room school building was only about thirty by fifty feet and rested on stone pillars about four feet off the ground at the front entrance. Inside a chalk-board stretched across the back wall, and a pot-bellied stove stood near the center of the room. A water bucket, a tin dipper, six erasers, and a broom completed the educational supplies.
With the arrival of the Great Depression, many of the sawmills, including the Boice Hardwood mill at Hartford, shut down. Most farmers had difficulty selling their crops, and some were forced to turn to
moonshining
Moonshine is high-proof liquor that is usually produced illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding detection. In the first decades of the 21st century, commercial dist ...
(see below). Many of the
mountain people
Hill people, also referred to as mountain people, is a general term for people who live in the hills and mountains.
This includes all rugged land above and all land (including plateaus) above elevation.
The climate is generally harsh, with s ...
survived the Depression due to their hunting skills. Smith remembered her father waking up before sunrise and "returning with several squirrels" for the family breakfast. The pains of the Depression were eased when the
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...
established a camp at what is now Cosby Creek Campground to construct trails for the newly created
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, w ...
, and the
TVA
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a Federal government of the United States, federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, an ...
began work on Douglas Dam on the other side of English Mountain.
Unlike many other Smoky Mountain communities, such as
Cades Cove
Cades Cove is an isolated valley located in the Tennessee section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The valley was home to numerous settlers before the formation of the national park. Today Cades Cove, the single most popular destinati ...
and the
Sugarlands
The Sugarlands is a valley in the north-central Great Smoky Mountains, located
in the Southeastern United States. Formerly home to a string of small Appalachian
communities, the valley is now the location of the Great Smoky Mountains National P ...
, only part of Cosby was incorporated into the national park. Many farmers were indeed glad to sell their land, but according to Mary Bell Smith:
The day was mournful for many families when the government bought the Great Smoky Mountains and created a national park. Our friends and acquaintances who had lived there for generations had to find new homes and a new way of life.
Moonshining
For much of the first half of the 20th century, Cosby was known to East Tennesseans as "The Moonshine Capital of the World." Of Cosby's moonshiners, Smith recalled:
So notorious did their activities become that I learned when I first went away from home that when I had to give my address as "Cosby," I should be ready to say, "Yes, they make it up there."Mary Bell Smith, ''In the Shadow of the White Rock'' (Boone, N.C.: Minor's Publishing Company, 1979), 54.
Like other Appalachian communities at the base of the Smokies, Cosby's chief crop was corn. While corn could be grown on relatively steep grades, the soil in Cosby's hilly recesses grew poorer and poorer with every clearing. Eventually, farmers struggled to break even, and in the late 19th century began to supplement their income by selling moonshine.
The deep winding coves and thick forests of the Smokies were the perfect cover for moonshine stills. As liquor supplies were strained with the rise of
prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...
in the early 20th century, demand for the mountaineers' moonshine grew steadily. While many mountain communities were difficult to access, Cosby was connected by road to Newport and Knoxville, giving it an early advantage. Furthermore, Cosby never managed to attract the tourism dollars that spilled into other park border towns, such as Gatlinburg and
Townsend Townsend (pronounced tounʹ-zənd) or Townshend may refer to:
Places United States
*Camp Townsend, National Guard training base in Peekskill, New York
*Townsend, Delaware
*Townsend, Georgia
*Townsend, Massachusetts, a New England town
** Townsend ...
. It is therefore no surprise that moonshining became such an issue in the Cosby valley.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
at what is now Oak Ridge brought in people from all over the country. As many were unaccustomed to the dry laws that were prevalent in Tennessee at the time, they bought illegally distilled liquor.Wilma Dykeman, ''The French Broad'' (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 243. This pushed the demand in Cosby still higher. Cosby's moonshiners dealt with the sugar shortage brought about by the war by taking advantage of a government supplement of sugar to any farmer who kept beehives. According to Appalachian historian
Wilma Dykeman
Wilma Dykeman Stokely (May 20, 1920 – December 22, 2006) was an American writer of fiction and nonfiction whose works chronicled the people and land of Appalachia.
Biography
Dykeman grew up in the Beaverdam community of Buncombe County, Nor ...
, "beehives sprouted around mountain cabins like weeds in a seedbed."
The explosion of moonshining in the Cosby area would lead to a cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement and moonshiners. The illegal distillers would warn one another of approaching revenue agents by setting off dynamite. Other times, locals would drive behind agents' cars, leading to a long tailgate along the road through the valley. Revenue officials could not rely on the residents of Cosby, who shunned intrusion by outside law enforcement. Moonshiners devised various methods for avoiding detection. Smith recalls:
On my walks to the country store, I have stood barefoot, watching as the hauler carefully brushed away his tire tracks with pine boughs. Moonshine stills were well concealed within the dark recesses of the mountains, but the smoke still wafted skyward from points all over the green mountains. Not so easily concealed were the odor of the mash fermenting and the whump, whump, whump of the thump keg. On a rare occasion I saw a still in full operation on Sunday in sight of Caton's Grove Church.
Eventually, competition between moonshiners led some to inform on others. Violence often erupted between rival families. The practice of illegally distilling liquor largely declined with the demise of dry laws in various counties around East Tennessee. While most residents of Cosby were no doubt law-abiding citizens, the notoriety the town gained as a moonshine mecca still hangs over it today.Katie Allison Granju, Guns, Illegal Liquor Seized In Cocke County Raid " WBIR.com, May 22, 2007. Retrieved: June 1, 2007.
Modern day
In 2020, the
United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of t ...
designated Cosby as a
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the count ...
.
Economy
Cosby's economy is fueled by the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, w ...
and the Foothills Parkway.
The community has been known to be a peaceful, country town contrary to its city counterpart,
Newport, Tennessee
Newport is a city in and the county seat of Cocke County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 6,945 at the 2010 census, down from 7,242 at the 2000 census. The estimated population in 2018 was 6,801. It is located along the Pigeon Ri ...
.
Cosby's economy feeds off a lot of tourism, especially off visitors and tourists from the Gatlinburg and
Pigeon Forge
Pigeon Forge is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 6,343. Situated just 5 miles (8 km) north of Great Smoky Mountains National Pa ...
areas. Known for its small, mountain town like culture and environment, Cosby has multiple motels, cabins, and country-style restaurants.
Education
The Cosby community is served by the Cocke County Schools System and the Sevier County Schools System.
Cocke County Schools:
*Cosby Elementary School – Grades K-8, the elementary school is connected to the high school and has the same address, and share some of the same buildings and cafeteria.
*
Cosby High School
Cosby High School is a public high school in Midlothian, Virginia, United States. Cosby opened in 2006 and is one of the newest of eleven high schools administered by Chesterfield County Public Schools.
History
Cosby High School was named for it ...
– Grades 9-12 and its mascot is the "Eagles." The high school has a prominent athletic program, which includes basketball, football, softball, baseball, volleyball, and soccer. Cosby has made the 1A state tournament in both girls' and boys' basketball multiple times and is considered to be one of the top 1A basketball programs in all of Eastern Tennessee.
*Smoky Mountain Elementary School – Grades PK–8
Sevier County Schools:
*Jones Cove Elementary School – Grades PK–8
*Pittman Center Elementary School – Grades PK–8
*
Gatlinburg-Pittman High School
Gatlinburg-Pittman High School is a public high school located in Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the Unit ...