Five sisters sold their mountain farm for a lifetime lease

The Walker sisters were local legends in the Great Smoky Mountains of Sevier County, Tennessee, known for their adherence to traditional ways of living. The five sisters inherited a farm from their father, John Walker. They raised sheep and grew corn and cotton to make their own clothes, and they became well known for Christmas feasts consisting almost wholly of food they had grown themselves.

The history of the homestead is a long construction project. An early Little Greenbrier settler built part of the cabin in the 1840s - which later became the kitchen - and Wiley King built most of the larger two-story section in the mid-1850s. John Walker, the sisters' father, added the porch and a corn crib in the 1870s.

When the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was formed in the 1930s, the Great Smoky Mountains Park Commission tried to persuade the Walker sisters to sell their land. To avoid bad publicity, the commission refused to initiate a condemnation suit against them. The sisters eventually sold the property in 1940 in exchange for a lifetime lease. They even sold handmade products at the park's establishment from 1940 until 1951.

Today, the cabin and outbuildings stand on a flat known as Five Sisters Cove. The surviving structures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The National Park Service gained control of the property in 1964, and the site remains a testament to the Walker family's history in the valley.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons