Those of us of a certain vintage have childhood memories of Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. By the time I came around, the Disney-produced film (which originated as a miniseries for ABC, probably the first of its kind) was already a decade old, but made a fairly regular rotation on television.
Actor Fess Parker, who portrayed the Tennessee pioneer and member of congress, had kids in a grip. He played the title character on NBC’s Daniel Boone TV series for six seasons, broke our hearts as Jim Coates in Disney’s Old Yeller, and still gave kids a hankering for coonskin caps decades after playing Crockett.
The real David Crockett is not a subject I ever expected to broach on the pages of KnoxTNToday. And, in reality, I’m not. There are plenty of biographies out there about him, and he penned some pretty fancy tales about himself before he met his end at the Alamo.
But Hurricane Helene, in all her destruction and woe, has brought Crockett back to the headlines. Or, at least, the place he was born. It should go without saying that the most important losses of this catastrophe are the human ones, most importantly the lives vanished in a second, and next to that the destruction of homes, communities and livelihoods.
Absorbing Helene’s wrath to its detriment was the David Crockett Birthplace State Park in Limestone, Tennessee, in Greene County. Crockett was born on this plot of land along the Nolichucky River back when East Tennessee was still part of North Carolina in 1786. And contrary to the ballad bearing his name, it is not on a mountaintop, though there are some nearby. By the time young Davy was 6-years-old, the family had moved to property on Lick Creek. It was one of many moves for the family before Davy was an adult.
The location of the state park (not to be confused with David Crockett State Park in Lawrenceburg) is based on his own recollections of being born near the junction of Big Limestone Creek and the Nolichucky River. The Crockett land had been purchased by Samuel Stonecypher in 1824. Stonecypher reportedly dismantled the Crockett cabin and used the timbers to build another home on the property. Stonecypher’s descendants also claimed the original footstone was still in place where the original cabin stood. That stone was inscribed with “On this spot Davy Crockett was born Aug 17 1786” at some point in the 1880s.
Though the 105-acre park with campgrounds and demonstration areas officially opened in 1973, its creation was born in the 1950s. The Davy Crockett Birthplace Association built a replica cabin on the site from the logs in the old Stonecypher cabin, some of which were logs from the old Crockett cabin. Since the architecture of Davy’s birthplace is unknown, the cabin was modelled after another from the same era. The footstone was placed in front of it.
And now it is all gone. The park suffered catastrophic damage from the floods, and is closed indefinitely. The cabin, footstone, trees, signage, landscaping, all gone. The resident donkeys, however, did survive and have been relocated for the time being.
The recovery from Helene for upper East Tennessee is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. The needs will evolve, so please check in with reliable authorities/ sources on the ground for supply and volunteer requests in those communities. Be a help, not a hindrance. The best resource to get lined up for service is with Volunteer Tennessee by going here. The link includes sign ups to volunteer as well as donation locations in each of the affected counties and other resources. There are 14 pages of opportunities to serve. So, let’s do this.
To learn more about the park go here. Please email me with your group’s support efforts, and I will try to add them to my weekly stories.
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Source: David Crockett Birthplace State Park, Disney Legends Archives