Crossville, Tennessee- Cumberland Homestead Community
09-02-2016
Author: in Glamping: Teresa and Ed
We have been working with five neat RV properties on the Tennessee Plateau in Crossville, TN, Golf Capital of Tennessee.
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While helping them develop their new Guest Guides which their visitors will use, we have passed by a museum a few times.
Looking for Fun things to do on the road? Check out the MobileRVing.com Events Calendar!
So, on Saturday, after making our business calls, we stopped by to learn about the Cumberland Homestead Community. This community was created from the New Deal of 1933. Here is something about it from 1934.
It set the Federal Government up in land and housing contracts with 251 families in this area. The contract offered was for a home you would help build and not just your home. You would work on all the homes and other buildings (or farming) in the community in a trade taught to you by other craftsmen. These people paid fair market price for the home, somewhere between $2,100 and $2,500, paid back to the Federal Government over 20-25 years at 4% interest. This was not a handout but a hand up. Habitat for Humanity (H4H) of the 1930s or one could say that H4H is the Homestead Act of today. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was very involved in the Homestead Act which established 100 of the communities across the US. This was the only such community in Tennessee. We stopped at the museum which used to be the Government Offices and water tower for this community.
The Crab Orchard sandstone is THE building material around Crossville and the Plateau. It is a beautiful stone. We watched a video on the project which was very inspiring. Think about it. If you farmed, your farm was probably on rented land. Your were growing produce that you could not sell due to the Depression. That meant you could not pay the rent on the farm. If you worked in the factory, it probably closed and you had no job, no home but heard about a new government program. The Homestead Act.
Two thousand people applied for the Cumberland Homestead project. Two thousand people from here and hundreds of miles away! Only two hundred fifty one homes would be built here and the applicants were not bums or losers. The applications they filled out looked like job interviews. We left the video and toured the museum, climbed the old tower. We could see the new water tower, the Cumberland Homestead high school (the project built the homes, the schools, churches, government offices, etc) which is now an elementary school.
In one photo, one can see a stone smoke stack from the old Vocational school which is no longer open.
They do hold reunions of the last high school classes to graduate from there and used to have the original Homesteaders come back but most have died. This is the 80th anniversary and they put a new plaque up commemorating the event in May 2014.
The climb up and down is a narrow stair case around the former 50,000 gallon water tank for the community.
We talked to one of the museum staff, a grandchild of an original Homesteader. Of the 251 homes built from 1934 until the 1940s, there are still 218 still be used as homes or businesses. So we departed from the museum to see one of the Homestead Houses.
It was about 1200 square feet and really well built. Imagine these homes on large acreage. Look at the beautiful views that would have been around this home on the Plateau.
Touring the house, it was compact but a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home. There was indoor plumbing where one would pump the water from the well (in the kitchen), up into the house water tank. When you opened the water flow, there was not a lot of water pressure as it was gravity driven. Here are the photos around the house tour.
The bathroom was a neat story. The government was not going to include an indoor bathroom until the First Lady pushed, demanded and got all the homes to be equipped with a bathroom. That was a bathtub, sink and toilet. A real luxury in the 1930s.
I found a tribute to the original family who lived in the house and was somewhat in awe of how these people overcame some of the worst times (economically) in our country’s history.
There was a bedroom on the first floor (which is now the desired floor plan again). Nice size with a closet too. Heading up the narrow staircase, it led to two bedrooms upstairs with closets. We walked around the outside of the house and noticed how it was updated with a heat pump, modern plumbing, city water. These homes are still in use today. We saw some on the market with 1200-1600 square feet asking price of $149,000 and up.
At the end of the day, what was so inspiring is that people whose lives had been utterly turned upside down, destroyed financially, came to an interview process. They earned a spot in the Homestead Community here. If I had been alive then, I would have been assigned a trade or duty. I might never have worked in marketing, television (wasn’t invented yet, I know) or healthcare but might have learned masonry, carpentry or farming. The original people who came to this Homestead Community did was was necessary and created a community for their families and themselves. Their children went to school like normal kids and many grew up to be successful adults. This was a government experiment that did not give the person a fish but taught them how to fish and made them pay for that fish. I am not sure if the other Homestead Communities worked as well as this one but the people who made this work in the 1930s could teach all of us today about survival and thriving through incredibly difficult times.
If you are in the Crossville, Tennessee area sometime, check out the Cumberland Homestead Community, its Museum and the Homestead House Museum. It is worth a few hours to see how the government and its struggling citizens got it right. God bless the USA.
Looking for "Parks Near Me" in Tennessee? Check out MobileRVing.com
While helping them develop their new Guest Guides which their visitors will use, we have passed by a museum a few times.
Looking for Fun things to do on the road? Check out the MobileRVing.com Events Calendar!
So, on Saturday, after making our business calls, we stopped by to learn about the Cumberland Homestead Community. This community was created from the New Deal of 1933. Here is something about it from 1934.
It set the Federal Government up in land and housing contracts with 251 families in this area. The contract offered was for a home you would help build and not just your home. You would work on all the homes and other buildings (or farming) in the community in a trade taught to you by other craftsmen. These people paid fair market price for the home, somewhere between $2,100 and $2,500, paid back to the Federal Government over 20-25 years at 4% interest. This was not a handout but a hand up. Habitat for Humanity (H4H) of the 1930s or one could say that H4H is the Homestead Act of today. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was very involved in the Homestead Act which established 100 of the communities across the US. This was the only such community in Tennessee. We stopped at the museum which used to be the Government Offices and water tower for this community.
The Crab Orchard sandstone is THE building material around Crossville and the Plateau. It is a beautiful stone. We watched a video on the project which was very inspiring. Think about it. If you farmed, your farm was probably on rented land. Your were growing produce that you could not sell due to the Depression. That meant you could not pay the rent on the farm. If you worked in the factory, it probably closed and you had no job, no home but heard about a new government program. The Homestead Act.
Two thousand people applied for the Cumberland Homestead project. Two thousand people from here and hundreds of miles away! Only two hundred fifty one homes would be built here and the applicants were not bums or losers. The applications they filled out looked like job interviews. We left the video and toured the museum, climbed the old tower. We could see the new water tower, the Cumberland Homestead high school (the project built the homes, the schools, churches, government offices, etc) which is now an elementary school.
In one photo, one can see a stone smoke stack from the old Vocational school which is no longer open.
They do hold reunions of the last high school classes to graduate from there and used to have the original Homesteaders come back but most have died. This is the 80th anniversary and they put a new plaque up commemorating the event in May 2014.
The climb up and down is a narrow stair case around the former 50,000 gallon water tank for the community.
We talked to one of the museum staff, a grandchild of an original Homesteader. Of the 251 homes built from 1934 until the 1940s, there are still 218 still be used as homes or businesses. So we departed from the museum to see one of the Homestead Houses.
It was about 1200 square feet and really well built. Imagine these homes on large acreage. Look at the beautiful views that would have been around this home on the Plateau.
Touring the house, it was compact but a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home. There was indoor plumbing where one would pump the water from the well (in the kitchen), up into the house water tank. When you opened the water flow, there was not a lot of water pressure as it was gravity driven. Here are the photos around the house tour.
The bathroom was a neat story. The government was not going to include an indoor bathroom until the First Lady pushed, demanded and got all the homes to be equipped with a bathroom. That was a bathtub, sink and toilet. A real luxury in the 1930s.
I found a tribute to the original family who lived in the house and was somewhat in awe of how these people overcame some of the worst times (economically) in our country’s history.
There was a bedroom on the first floor (which is now the desired floor plan again). Nice size with a closet too. Heading up the narrow staircase, it led to two bedrooms upstairs with closets. We walked around the outside of the house and noticed how it was updated with a heat pump, modern plumbing, city water. These homes are still in use today. We saw some on the market with 1200-1600 square feet asking price of $149,000 and up.
At the end of the day, what was so inspiring is that people whose lives had been utterly turned upside down, destroyed financially, came to an interview process. They earned a spot in the Homestead Community here. If I had been alive then, I would have been assigned a trade or duty. I might never have worked in marketing, television (wasn’t invented yet, I know) or healthcare but might have learned masonry, carpentry or farming. The original people who came to this Homestead Community did was was necessary and created a community for their families and themselves. Their children went to school like normal kids and many grew up to be successful adults. This was a government experiment that did not give the person a fish but taught them how to fish and made them pay for that fish. I am not sure if the other Homestead Communities worked as well as this one but the people who made this work in the 1930s could teach all of us today about survival and thriving through incredibly difficult times.
If you are in the Crossville, Tennessee area sometime, check out the Cumberland Homestead Community, its Museum and the Homestead House Museum. It is worth a few hours to see how the government and its struggling citizens got it right. God bless the USA.
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Author: Ed & Teresa Herbert
