Editor’s note: This is the fourth article in a series about Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its dedication this year.

If you live in the Middlesboro basin today, but could see your backyard over 200 years ago, you would witness close to 200,000 pioneers walking across your land. Theirs was a journey fueled by the American pioneer spirit and there is no place better to learn about that than Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. Standing in the Cumberland Gap you can imagine the determination of those 18th century pioneers as they crossed the Cumberland Mountains, and by taking a tour to Brush Mountain in the park, you can see how that pioneer spirit still survived over 100 years later in the hearts of the mountain people at the isolated Hensley Settlement.

During special tours of Hensley Settlement, you might glimpse a woman quilting at a window by lantern-light, or some other quickly dissolving apparition of that age-old pioneer lifestyle. This evening program is just one of several ways to visit a lifestyle that was dying out in the early 1900's amid a quickening flurry of cutting timber and extracting coal.

Since the founding of Hensley Settlement in 1903, an unlikely series of circumstances somehow fell into place to insure that this mountaintop pioneer home-place did not disappear forever.

Turn the clock back to 1950. Famous journalist, Joe Creason, working for the Louisville Courier-Journal, climbs the steep mountainside to Hensley Settlement to look old Sherman Hensley in the eye. Joe knows that ten years earlier in 1940 an Act of Congress provided for the establishment of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and authorized the Secretary of the Interior "to accept donations of land... buildings, and other property within boundaries of the said park..."

Joe’s guide is Howard Douglass of Middlesboro, secretary of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park Association, who is gathering land to donate to the government for the future national park. Joe said about that day, "You doubt that Hensley Settlement will really be as it was described by Howard Douglass... He said it was a place where a lone resident, remaining from a once sizable group, still lives as mountain people did many years ago. Once over that last hump, however, your doubts evaporate like a drop of water on a hot griddle." "Much of the land has been cleared and fenced...over on your left is a three room log cabin made entirely by hand... Farther on are still more (buildings) all uninhabited except for one. The chinking is falling from between the logs, many of the wooden shingles have blown away, and the sagging, half -open doors creak in the soft wind."

Finally they arrive at the place where Sherman Hensley, then in his 70s, lives all alone "except for two cur dogs, a cow and the mule that is his means of transportation up and down the mountain." Joe accepts Sherman's warm extended hand and invitation to come in "to set a spell" and hear the story of the rise and decline of the settlement from the patriarch himself. Joe gives the article about his visit with Sherman an appropriate title, “He Dwells in Loneliness.” (From Joe Creason’s 1950 article in Louisville Courier Journal)

In that same year of 1950, a commissioner's deed states that "the Kentucky National Park Commission, Commonwealth of Kentucky, filed its action against Sherman Hensley and other kin to transfer lands of the Hensley Settlement by condemnation to the Kentucky National Park Commission. Payment of $3,750.00 to the family insured that these lands would later be donated to become part of the park.

In an interview in 1960 with Sherman, park historian Hobart Cawood asked "When did you leave the mountain, Mr. Hensley? And why?" Sherman replies: "Well, 1951, I sold my land up there to the park and everybody else was moving off. They told me I could stay if I wanted to." Cawood - "Were you the last one to leave?" Sherman - "Well, I stayed there about two year." Cawood - "Did the people mind selling their land to the park?" "Well, I don't know as I could say they did. They some of them really wanted to sell maybe some of them really didn't want to sell so much or had rather not sell, anyway they sold. Some of them wanted to sell because I know I've heard them talk, they wanted to get off the mountain." Cawood - "Did you get a fair price for the land? Did everybody get a fair price?" Sherman - "Yeah, they got a pretty fair price."

The Act of Congress establishing Cumberland Gap National Historical Park mandated that it preserve nationally significant historical and natural resources such as the "prehistoric and historic trails,... the view-shed from Pinnacle Overlook”, and other features associated with the great westward migration and the Civil War. These features included the Cumberland Gap where the pioneers came through, and the commanding White Rocks, a pioneer landmark.

Unbeknownst to Congress, the farmsteads where the Hensleys and Gibbons lived happened to be in-between these two nationally significant landmarks. Hensley Settlement was an unseen and unknown personal home-place to law-makers in Washington. The fact that this settlement has been preserved through the years makes it seem the settlement has a spirit all its own watching over it.



1940 - Act of Congress establishes Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and mandates what should be preserved. No mention of Hensley Settlement.

1951 - Even though the agreement with Sherman and others owning land on the mountain stated that they could have lifetime tenure of the property, the settlement was left to its own when Sherman left after his lonely vigil of two years.

1955 – Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is formally established when the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia present to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior title deeds of land they had gathered together including the deeds containing Hensley Settlement.

1959 – Cumberland Gap National Historical Park Dedicated

1960 – Park Superintendent William Luckett wants the Settlement restored and plans are made, but lack of funding causes plan to be scaled down to only include the Willie Gibbons farmstead at a cost of $35,000.00 Lack of funding made reality of this project unlikely.

1965 - A stroke of luck comes when the Gap Job Corps Conservation Center is established and makes the plan a reality. Part of the justification for the corps being placed here is that the work of restoring the Hensley Settlement would actually serve to train the workers in carpentry, equipment operation, surveying, and log building restoration.

Throughout the years, both before, during and after the park establishment, Hensley Settlement has seen many plans, hopes and dreams come and go. One plan years ago in the early years of the park even mentioned a possible main road along the top of the mountain to bring masses of visitors to the restored settlement. This never materialized, thank goodness, as the peace and tranquility so much a part of the Hensley experience would have surely been lost. However, not all things have gone as some folks would have liked. For whatever reason now lost to history, be it financial or logistical, Sherman's cabin was not one of those restored and Willie Gibbon's cabin was lost to fire around the year 2000.

But if you have a moment to speak with Cumberland Gap National Historical Park Superintendant Mark Woods, it quickly becomes evident that Hensley Settlement is very much part of the experience here at Cumberland Gap. As he speaks, you can hear the pioneer spirit coming through his words as he relates present hopes and dreams for the future of the Hensley Settlement, "It has long been a dream of mine to see a living farm of Appalachian spirit at Hensley, with cattle, mule or horse, and demonstrations and events brought to life through the cooperation of staff members and volunteers."

With the realization of so many other dreams accomplished in the last 15 years, such as the tunnel, restoration of the Gap, and now the Fern Lake Watershed acquisition, it seems as though this would be a small feat for a man of such abilities. Even building back a cabin that would exhibit the original features of the Willie Gibbons home factors into that dream.

But Supt. Woods makes it clear that because of funding and other limitations the realization of this dream for Hensley could only happen as a result of the park partnering with the mountain people that love the settlement the most. Those mountain people, including descendants of the Hensley and Gibbons families, would likely be the additional resources needed to embark on this new journey of exciting proportions for the future of Hensley Settlement. Who knows what the next chapter in this story might be.

But if we could ask some of those original long dead 18th century pioneers who walked through your backyard about the pioneer spirit, they would tell you that they passed it down to us through the generations, and how, with the American pioneer spirit… anything is possible.

Pamela Eddy is the lead historical interpreter for the park. Material for this article was gathered from the park archives.