For millennia it was the land between the rivers, bordered by the north flowing Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. According to the ranger at the Land Between the Lakes North Welcome Center, the land was visited by Native Americans but because it flooded, they never built permanent settlements here. However American settlers appreciated the fertile land and streamed in through the Cumberland Gap in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries building homes, churches, schools, communities. Then came the TVA in the 1930s and the formation of a national recreation area in the 1960s. The government purchased all the land. Families left behind the farms their ancestors had created. Little is left as testament to their lives when this was the land between the rivers. Just cemeteries, one restored church and a few representative buildings clustered at the 1850 Homeplace. Today we drove a few of the backroads to the point where they run into the lake, walked among the tombstones and wondered if some with familiar names were ancestors’ relatives, visited the restored church, found a couple of geocaches, and pondered life between the rivers, before the dams, before the lakes, before the park.
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