Finding home a matter of looking in the right places

A modern water tower helps ensure sufficient water pressure for the area, but I still can’t reconcile how much this one dominates the Cumberland Homesteads skyline, such as it is. Looking generally south from the Cumberland Homesteads tower.

Author Thomas Wolfe famously said that you can’t go home again. That doesn’t mean I stop trying.

Crossville and Cumberland County are not the same place where I grew up the 1960s and 1970s. Change was coming even then — not only was it inevitable but to a large degree planned. Developers of Lake Tansi Village and Fairfield Glade were promoting the Cumberland Plateau to tourists and future residents from the midwestern states, and they found a receptive audience. 

But progress brings change, and change is hard. I decided long ago that my prospects were better away the mountain than on it. I often think about how much different things might be had I chose to stay and build a life and career here. I’m happy with how it turned out but still, I wonder.

In my case, though, I can almost quite literally go home again. The Homestead house at 10 Highland Lane was built in 1935 and is the only house I’ve known as a family home. The original part of our house — the Homestead part — is largely intact, with only minor alterations. The house is as I remember it as a child and is a source of comfort like very few tangible things can be.

Some background: my family has long been on the Cumberland Plateau but we’re not first-generation Homesteaders. But having owned the house for 62 years and having lived the second-generation lifestyle, one where life was far easier and more modern than for the largely self-sustaining original Homesteaders, I’ll argue that we are Homesteaders through and through.

My family went to Homestead Baptist Church, the first congregation to split from the original community church. The church has grown but the beautiful stone sanctuary on Highway 127 South and across from the entrance to the state park remains as I’ve always remembered it. Some of my earliest memories are from Sunday School and other church activities. I’ve drifted away from organized religion as an adult but I cherish those years of active church life as a family. It was a good way to grow up.

The state park above is Cumberland Mountain State Park, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps while the original Homesteads were coming along. When my friends and myself were old enough we’d often ride our bikes to the park and spend the day there, swimming in the lake or playing tennis or taking out boats or hanging out at the then-new Rec Hall. The park is sort of different today than I remember it, but the iconic bridge and dam, the mill house, the bath house, the boat docks and the original layout are still in place. Even the A-frame camp store where I worked the summer after graduating from high school is still there.

We went to Homestead Elementary all the way through, playing sports and participating in every event and activity. I remember always liking school there and loving the unique Homestead Elementary campus, the self-contained, masonry classrooms connected by breezeways and large indoor hallways. As a child I didn’t realize the uniqueness of the school but I knew that I liked it and that I liked going there. I’m very appreciative that the school board has shown great sensitivity to the original character of the campus while doing necessary upgrades and repairs.

(I’m also grateful to the Cumberland Homesteads Tower Association for reviving the tower and all they’re doing to record and preserve the history of the Cumberland Homesteads. The tower has long been a visible and defining landmark of the Homesteads but the building itself had been long abandoned, over the course of my lifetime anyway, until the association took over. The former project administrative offices at the tower’s base are now a museum, and you can climb the 97 steps to the top of the tower for a great view — in the summertime a verdant tableau of treetops, but still a great view.)

And we lived in a Homestead house, the house at 10 Highland Lane, which along with 22 acres my parents purchased in the spring of 1958 for $7,500 — nearly $68,000 in 2020 dollars. Nowadays, $7,500 won’t buy even an acre of prime Homestead land but my mother has often told me how as a young newlywed she worried about making that $108 payment every month. She and my dad persevered, of course, and they and now we have long held a free and clear title to the house and property.

Our house is similar to the other Homestead houses in its use of indigenous materials such as local pine for paneling, oak for hardwood flooring and stone for the exterior as well as chimneys and hearths and other features inside. Our house looks like a Homestead house because it is a Homestead house, yet it retains some individuality because of the floor plan. Original Homesteaders could choose from something like eight floor plans designed by project architect William Macy Stanton, and within certain parameters could modify their plan. I’m not sure that our house has any modifications from the original plan, but regardless, I like what was built.

As constant and unchanging as the house may be, the property itself has changed, particularly along the road frontage. Over the years my mother sold parcels of the property — on either side of the Homestead house to family, and another parcel that’s a little removed and separated by a depression and stand of trees to a separate family who built there. They’ve been good neighbors so it’s all good.

The character of neighborhood and the Homesteads in general has changed. Our neighbors were once original or second-wave Homesteaders who had bought and kept their homes and property. But as the second and third generations have taken over, more and more parcels of the original farms are being sold, and more people are building here. Progress brings change, and change is hard.

Still, there’s enough of the original Homesteads here to bring on serious bouts of nostalgia where I pine for the way things were, if only I could be a child again. I loved growing up in the Homesteads and on the Cumberland Plateau, in a home and setting that seems so long gone. I was a child so maybe things weren’t as rosy and pleasant as I remember them — for as much time as my parents spent with the family they also always both worked to make sure we always had what we needed, and most things we wanted.

The Homestead house at 10 Highland Lane is a source of comfort and connects me to both my youth and the larger community. I’m lucky to have grown up in a Homestead house and more fortunate still to own that house today. That house was just a house to me while growing up, but I can appreciate and am quite proud of the family and historical heritage it represents.

So, can you go home again? In my case the answer is “sort of.” I can’t duplicate the Homesteads and Crossville and Cumberland County of my youth, but I know where to find the remnants, the pieces that haven’t changed. It’s still here. You just have to know where to look.

rpdgraham@gmail.com