TENNESSEE'S CUMBERLAND COUNTRY

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Health and Recreation

Such resort developments are a driving force in Cumberland's economy, and the large retirement-age population they've lured to the area has attracted a number of physicians. As a result, there is approximately one doctor for every 800 people. The county also has a fine 256-bed hospital, and the Uplands Retirement Community incorporates the 62-bed Wharton Nursing Home.

On the other hand, the large resorts were initially resented by many of the native-born, since they took over some prime hunting land. There's still enough left, however, to attract thousands of hunters each year. One of the main destinations is the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area. Founded in 1942, this 78,000-acre wildlife reserve is one of the largest in North America with annual hunts (including archery and black-powder hunting) available under the watchful eye of the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission. Here you'll find deer, quail, wild turkey, grouse, and wild boar. The very rare red-cockaded woodpecker and other birds also make the area a first-rate bird-watching site during nonhunting seasons. The commission has also introduced river otter into the Obed Wild and Scenic River, which was added to the National Park System in 1976. (To prevent any contamination of the river, the city of Crossville built a new sewage treatment plant that makes the water flowing out of it as pure as the town's drinking water.) There are also private hunting preserves in the region. Caryonah, Tennessee's oldest and largest, offers hunters game birds, Babiroussa and Corsican ram, wild goats, mouflon, and the county's famous wild boar, which is actually a cross between the Russian wild boar and the southern razorback.

And, obviously, with all the rivers, creeks, lakes, and ponds, fishing-particularly for smallmouth and largemouth bass-is a popular pastime.

Less than an hour away to the north is one of the nation's newest public playgrounds: Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. It will eventually encompass 123,000 acres of heavily forested, extremely rugged terrain in Tennessee and Kentucky with over 80 miles of prime canoeing waters, as well as whitewater rafting and hiking and horseback trails. Though the plan is to keep The Big South Fork primarily a wilderness area, future site development includes a partial refurbishing of the Blue Heron mining community, the restored grist mill of Alvin York (the Sergeant York of World War I fame), and the historic community of Rugby, a utopian settlement created in the last half of the nineteenth century by English author (Tom Brown's School Days) and social reformer Thomas Hughes, for the younger sons of English gentry.

Treasures From the New Deal

Just a few miles south of Crossville, the countryside is dotted with quaint, two-story stone houses that-except for some recent additions-all look similar. They were the result of the Homestead Act passed during the depression of the 30s. A part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal-and of particular interest to his wife, Eleanor-this act gave poor families the means of acquiring land.

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