page_title: Cosby, Tennessee
section_title: Early 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Cosby, Tennessee / History / Early 20th century
caption_attribution_description: The grave of Ella Costner, "Poet Laureate of the Smokies." Costner grew up in Cosby, Tennessee in the early 1900's. The marker reads: ELLA V COSTNER 1ST LT. U.S.A.R.N. POET LAUREATE OF THE SMOKIES FEB 18 1894&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;JULY 11 1982
context_page_description: Cosby is an unincorporated community in Cocke and Sevier counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Although it is not a census-designated place, the ZIP Code Tabulation Area for the ZIP Code that serves Cosby had a population of 5,201 as of the 2000 U.S. Census. The community has given its name to the northeastern section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which forms its southern boundary.
context_section_description: By 1900, most Cosby residents were either farmers or worked in lumber mills. 
  Some residents supplemented their income by gathering ginseng, evergreens, and moss in the mountains, and some distilled corn liquor.  Religion was still of utmost importance.
  Most church services were held once every month, usually in framed buildings.  Mary Bell Smith, who grew up in Cosby in the 1920s, remembered:
   
  Sermons were long and harrowing.  In vivid language, the preacher painted Heaven and Hell, with considerably more emphasis on Hell than upon Heaven.  I mentally pictured the Devil as a monstrous red animal with horns and a long tail, who carried a four-pronged pitchfork.  For some reason, I believed he lived in the ground and could appear at will.  The church had no organ or piano, so we sang without instruments. 
  With the construction of railroads between Newport and Hartford, the Progressive Era began to make its way to the Smokies.  Electricity had arrived in the sawmill towns in the 1920s.  Still, Cosby lagged behind.  Although the Baptist Church Organization established Cosby Academy in 1913, most of Cosby's children received brief instruction in rudimentary schoolhouses.  Mary Bell Smith recalled:
   
  The one-room school building was only about thirty by fifty feet and rested on stone pillars about four feet off the ground at the front entrance.  Inside a chalk-board stretched across the back wall, and a pot-bellied stove stood near the center of the room.  A water bucket, a tin dipper, six erasers, and a broom completed the educational supplies. 
  With the arrival of the Great Depression, many of the sawmills, including the Boice Hardwood mill at Hartford, shut down.  Most farmers had difficulty selling their crops, and some were forced to turn to moonshining (see below).  Many of the mountain people survived the Depression due to their hunting skills.  Smith remembered her father waking up before sunrise and "returning with several squirrels" for the family breakfast.  The pains of the Depression were eased when the Civilian Conservation Corps established a camp at what is now Cosby Creek Campground to construct trails for the newly created Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the TVA began work on Douglas Dam on the other side of English Mountain.
  Unlike many other Smoky Mountain communities, such as Cades Cove and the Sugarlands, only part of Cosby was incorporated into the national park.  Many farmers were indeed glad to sell their land, but according to Mary Bell Smith:
  The day was mournful for many families when the government bought the Great Smokey Mountains and created a national park.  Our friends and acquaintances who had lived there for generations had to find new homes and a new way of life.
caption: The grave of Ella Costner, former Cosby resident and Poet Laureate of the Smokies, near Cosby Campground
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