The resort behind the farm stand opened on the edge of the Smokies in 1976 and has introduced countless visitors to the mountains of the South. Across from a produce stand run by an older gent in a John Deere cap, customers lined six deep for crusty bread, farmhouse cheese, and preserves from Blackberry Farm. One crisp Saturday morning, I went to investigate the proposition at the Maryville Farmers’ Market. Hypothesis: rural gentrification follows chefs the way urban gentrification follows artists. I grew up around capable farm wives and good country cooks who knew how to make the most of a backyard vegetable garden now, there is a food scene. No less surprising, Blount County has also gone foodie. At 256 feet, Fall Creek Falls, in Spencer, is one of the highest in the eastern U.S. The dinky country roads I once knew have swollen into four-lane highways. Amazon is building two supersize distribution centers, and next year gunmaker Smith & Wesson will relocate its headquarters from Massachusetts. On my grandparents’ former farm, cornfields now grow houses. Anecdotally, the transformations I’ve witnessed in Blount County, also home to my father’s farming family, the Wests, since before the Civil War, defy belief. To cite one small but telling data point: Tennessee was the top state for inbound U-Haul rentals in 2020. The Tennessee I knew as a child has been transformed by a long economic boom stoked by the lush Sunbelt climate, favorable business environment, low cost of living, and nonexistent state income tax. Mary Alford sells bouquets from her garden at the Maryville farmers’ market. It’s easy to underestimate the differences until you’ve explored Tennessee end to end. The three stars on Tennessee’s state flag symbolise these so-called Grand Divisions. And West Tennessee, with its river port at Memphis, is marked by cotton, blues music, and the Civil Rights Movement. The Middle Tennessee plateau has Nashville, the seat of both political power and the business of country music. East Tennessee, centered at Knoxville, is threaded by the Tennessee River and went Union in the state’s 1861 vote on secession. The state’s distinctive outline - long and skinny, laid out like a moonshiner with his head against the Smoky Mountains and his toes in the cool Mississippi River - contains a trio of distinct regions. I sometimes joke that Tennessee is three different countries. The Tennessee I knew as a child has been transformed. But to hear what it says, you have to go yonder, where the stories are told. “Then you missed half my life.” Family lore is like that: some stories get repeated, but others are left unsaid. I hadn’t heard some of the stories before, and it occurred to me why: I’d never driven this particular stretch of road with my mother. Up there stood the log cabin where my great-grandfather was knifed to death in a dispute over a hog. That was where her family lived when the house caught fire. This, she said, pointing out of the window, was where she first saw a hummingbird. On the spur of the moment, we exited the park and followed a poem of country roads - Rocky Branch to Laws Chapel to Butler Mill to Butterfly Gap - across the landscape of her memory. Fried chicken and a charcuterie board at the Restaurant at RT Lodge. My mother had recently recovered from a frightening brush with COVID, and the shadow on her routine chest X-ray had not yet been diagnosed as cancer. On this day, sourwood trees glowed ember-red in the woods and pale blue asters dusted the hay fields like they’d fallen from the sky. It was a fine fall day in “the Cove,” where the two of us have been going for as long as I can remember - it’s our pilgrimage into the Smokies’ natural temple of wildflower meadows and baptismal streams. My mother was having a ball as she recounted our family history from the passenger seat. It’s the crown jewel of the Great Smoky Mountains, America’s busiest national park. Cades Cove is today a popular scenic destination and outdoor museum of Appalachian history, with a group of historic buildings at its heart. He settled in a pioneer community called Cades Cove, on land taken from its Cherokee owners in the 1819 Treaty of Calhoun, and his offspring have been in Blount County, East Tennessee, ever since. The first of my ancestors to arrive was Robert Burchfield, my fifth great-grandfather on my mother’s side. By Kevin West Photographs by Houston Cofield On a tour of his native state, Travel+Leisure India & South Asia’s contributor finds the Tennessee of his youth has become affluent and forward-looking-a place where history, music, and food are being celebrated in new and thrilling ways.
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