Walker Sisters Place

The Walker Sisters Place was a homestead in the Great Smoky Mountains of Sevier County, in the U.S. state of Tennessee.

The surviving structures—which include the cabin, springhouse, and corn crib—were once part of a farm that belonged to the Walker sisters—five sisters who became local legends because of their adherence to traditional ways of living.

The sisters inherited the farm from their father, and after the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was formed in the 1930s, they obtained a lifetime lease.

[1] The Walker Sisters Place is located at the upper (northern) end of Little Greenbrier, a narrow valley carved into the southwestern slope of Cove Mountain by Little Brier Branch.

Early Little Greenbrier settler Arthur "Brice" McFalls, who moved to the area from South Carolina,[3] bought what is now the Walker Place from Renfro in 1838.

[1] In 1866, King's daughter, Margaret (1846–1909), married John Walker, a Union Army veteran who had just returned from the Civil War.

[1] While the mountain communities in the surrounding valleys began to modernize to some extent after World War I, the Walker sisters clung to the old way of life, which emphasized self-reliance.

[5] Once the Park was established, the sisters could no longer do many of the activities that made up their traditional way of life such as grazing livestock, hunting, fishing, or wood cutting.

The structure's large gabled roof overhangs both sides of the crib considerably, creating ample shed space.

[1] These structures were sometimes called "plunder sheds," as farmers used them to store miscellaneous items such as barbed wire, brooms, firewood, and tools.

Walker Cabin, showing the older section and porch in the foreground, and the newer section rising behind it
Corn crib
Springhouse