TENNESSEE'S CUMBERLAND COUNTRY

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Once, buffalo and other game made the plateau an Indian hunting ground. North Carolina's legislature cut the region's first road through Crab Orchard Gap in 1785 to connect the state with Nashville. Thomas M. Clark founded Crab Orchard, the oldest settlement in the county, in 1796, and the inn he built in the early 1800s served travelers until it burned in 1929. Another inn, the 1880 Hotel, still stands, and its present owners are restoring it. In the meantime, its art and antique shop is open to the public.

Even before travelers through the mountains were safe from Indian attacks, Crab Orchard, named for its wild crab apple trees, was a campground and resting place for pioneers moving west. An early settler wrote, "The ground is yellow with crab apples in the fall, and the air sweet with their scent in the spring."

Today, Crab Orchard is the site of a large limestone mine. The Cumberland Plateau also has coal, gas, and oil deposits, but surrounding counties have exploited these resources (sometimes, as in the case of open-pit coal mining, with ugly results) more than Cumberland has, and, recently, high costs and low prices have made production unprofitable.

Cumberland Crops

Though the soil that rests on top of Cumberland's mineral wealth is not ideal, you can grow almost any temperate-climate crop in a home garden. While the earth is well drained and loamy, it's also strongly acid and low in natural fertilizers. Local farmers compensate by planting a lot of nitrogen-fixing legumes. Over 12,000 of the region's acres are sown in snap beans, and-because two plantings a year are possible-Cumberland County ships nearly one-fourth of the nation's commercial supply of this crop.

Both blueberries and muscadine grapes like Cumberland soil.

Raising feeder calves and pigs is also big business, and cattle, as well as famous Tennessee Walking Horses, graze on rich green pastures, creating beautiful, bucolic scenes all over the county. Late spring frosts make fruit growing a little risky, but apples with a "special flavor" have long been raised in the area. (When President-Elect Andrew Jackson passed through Grassy Cove, one of the area's early-settled, picturesque valleys, on his way to Washington, he distributed apple seeds to some of his admirers. One of these was John Ford, Sr., who had settled in the valley in 1801, and his resulting tree produced light green, medium-large apples with a pinkish blush and a tart taste ideal for applesauce and pies. Before a windstorm finally blew the tree down in 1903, it had been grafted onto other area seedlings, which became known as Jackson apple trees.)

Blueberries thrive in the area's acid soil, and grapes, particularly the native fox and muscadines, also do well. The Highland Winery in Fentress County just to the north was the first winery established in Tennessee in modern times, and its world-class wines won the International Medal of Quality in Madrid in both 1983 and 1984-but you'll have to visit the winery to taste and buy them. Even then, you probably won't be able to buy any of its famous muscadine wine. There's a waiting list for this coveted vintage.

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