Crossville, Tennessee is a small city midway between Knoxville and Nashville, north of Chattanooga. People lived in the area for many years and in the years leading up to the 1929 depression found thousands of unemployed miners, textile mill workers, and farmers.
The Cumberland Homesteads project emerged from the New Deal era begun with the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 when the country was in the grip of the Great Depression. President Roosevelt called a special session of Congress to enact a series of measures to deal directly with the severity of the economic decline that was affecting the lives of millions of people. The unemployed people of this area applied for one of the proposed 250 Homesteads to be constructed and purchased by the selected Homesteaders who had to meet rigid requirements of “high character, ability, honesty, and willingness to work and cooperate with the government in this planned community.”
The Cumberland Homesteads Museum is dedicated to their history.
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| Homesteads Tower |
One of the things Roosevelt did — central to our story — was to set up a Subsistence Homesteads project four miles south of Crossville. Like most of the New Deal efforts, things moved really fast. The Upper Cumberland was flooded with posters asking “Do you want to own a home?” and information sheets explaining the project and the way to apply for it. The sheets told of 250 homes to be built and work for hundreds of men. Newspapers in Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga ran stories in response to the “excitement” on the Plateau.
During the fabled “100 Days” this congress enacted a major piece of legislation which was the omnibus National Recovery Act. In that act was an almost insignificant clause of a few lines which directed the President “for the aid of stranded areas” to set up a credit of $25,000,000. Out of these words will come projects affecting thousands of lives. On the basis of the law the President created the Federal Subsistence Homestead Corporation and soon subsistence farms projects were underway in several states.
Looking at all these pictures one can see how poor people were before and during the 1930s. These people were very poor, clothes in tatters and children with no shoes.
The National Recovery Act created the Federal Subsistence Homesteads Corporation with a grant of $431,500,000. The Corporation purchased the 10,000 acres that surround this area. More than 400 men were employed to clear land and build roads to establish this unique community. When people heard that homesteads were being built, there were more than 1,000 families that applied in hopes of being one of the families chosen to get a homestead. The people worked hard for their home, living in barns until the houses were built.
The men came first to clear the land, to work the sawmills, and to build new wooden barns for temporary housing for their families. When the barns were completed, the women and children joined their husbands. They lived in the barns until their new stone homes were finished.
Applicants had to write for an application form. When it was received an investigator would be assigned to interview the applicant to learn about family character, skills, work experience, and commitment to become a homesteader. The deportment of one’s children was also asked about. The early plan called for about a two year “trial period” to determine if the person and family was suitable as a homesteader.
Many approved applicants were out of work coal miners, loggers, landless farmers, construction tradesmen, and some were from a “white collar” background. Many additional men were employed on the project that were not designated to be owner of one of the farm homesteads. Eventually the 10,000 acres were cleared, the roads were built and the Cumberland Homesteads Project helped create a scenic area of Cumberland County featuring farms, pastures, orchards, modern homes, churches, and a school.
One major myth or fallacy that lingers over this monumental project is the persistent belief that these modern homes with their assigned acres were given, as in gifted, to the approved homesteaders. This is NOT SO.
In the early days of the project the men’s wages were fifty cents an hour. When paid, the men received one-third in cash with the remaining two-thirds “returned” to the government as credit hours (sweat equity) to be credited to the eventual purchase of their homes and farms. The homesteaders worked on, somewhat blindly, for several years. During this time the administration of the project was overseen by about five federal agencies. Finally the homesteaders organized and were able to get answers to questions about ownership of the properties they had labored on so long. Government agents and the homesteaders agreed to accept market values assigned by outside appraisers. This allowed the homesteaders to know the market value of what they were working toward and thus could begin “for real” to pay for their homes, and initiate the process of obtaining the deeds to their farms. It is interesting to note that a house and farm of 20 to 25 acres was assessed at about $2,000.
These men who just a few months before had been unemployed and without hope, were trained to become carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and rock masons. The work was hard and the pay was low, but they were now able to support their families and they had hope of owning their very own homestead. The women and children worked hard to keep the home, make a garden, and tend their livestock.
Between 1934 and 1938 around 250 houses, a school house, a tower building, and several bridges, all constructed of stone and other native materials were completed. Most of these structures are still standing as a memorial to all these Original Homestead men and women who were so dedicated and worked so hard to establish this Historical Community.
In 1941 World War II brought an end to the Great Depression. The young men went into military service and older men went to work in defense projects. In 1946 the federal government ended its involvement in the Cumberland Homesteads Project. Deeds were given to the homesteaders who had paid for their homes and land. The others were given five years to comply with the set purchase price. It is believed that a small number of the original homesteaders chose to leave the project at that time.
The Homesteads Tower was a cross-shaped building centered around an eight-story octagonal water tower. I decided to walk up to the tower, which was 97 steps. First was small wooden steps, then metal spiral stairs like you were going up into a water tower. The observation platform has a 360 view of the surrounding area.
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| Going up |
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| Going down from the tower |
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| Looking up the tower |
From the museum, we went to visit an authentic Homestead House. For not knowing about woodwork, stone masonry, and building, they did an amazing job building their homes.
Notice that next to the sink is a well pump. Each homestead house had a drilled water well and a hand pump in the kitchen. Water was hand pumped up to a storage tank in the attic where it could be gravity fed downstairs to the kitchen sink and bathroom fixtures.
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| Check out the motor on top of the frig |
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| Pot Belly Stove |
Original Homesteaders at the Cumberland Homesteads 60th year get together held on July 2, 1994.
Few wives changed history as much as Eleanor Roosevelt. She was active in developing new social programs, fighting for women's rights, and helping her husband get re-elected. She also wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column called "My Day" which appeared all over the country. Her columns were written between 1936-1945 and ranged in topics from major events to her life in the White House and was an outlet for her to express her opinions about world affairs, as well as, the everyday lives of American citizens. Her independence was well known, and she drove her own automobile, traveled by plane when few did and earned her own money by doing radio shows, giving lectures and writing articles. She will be remembered as the wife of FDR, but also as a person who influenced and inspired countless people.
She accepted an invitation to visit the Cumberland Homestead in 1934 and spoke to the people from the back of a flat bed truck. She was well received by the crowd and remains revered by most Homesteaders as a first-class First Lady.
Eleanor Roosevelt also played a major role in the development of the Cumberland Homesteads and their families. Many children in the community were going to school without shoes, and when Mrs. Roosevelt found out about that, she went to French's shoes and had them put shoes on all the children and paid for them out of her own pocket. To this day, the children are able to get shoes at half price.
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