CUMBERLAND GAP NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK Hensley settlement: It's high but lowly

The settlement re-creates a way of life once common in Appalachia.
By JON BAKER
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
The only road to the Hensley Settlement winds it way up the heavily forested flanks of Brush Mountain. It's not much of a highway, just an old gravel logging road wide enough for one vehicle.
Along the way up, you can catch glimpses of several waterfalls on Shillalah Creek through the trees -- if you don't mind looking down from the dizzying heights above the hollow where the creek flows.
The road has more than its share of hairpin curves, so sharp that our van driver for Wilderness Road Tours told us that the people in the front of the van could say hello to the people in the back as we rounded the curves. It's a rugged road, but the destination is more than worth it.
The Hensley Settlement is one of the prime attractions for visitors to the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park, which straddles the border between Kentucky and Virginia. A collection of homes and farm buildings on top of Brush Mountain, the settlement re-creates a lost way of life that was once common in Appalachia.
Wilderness Road Tours offers twice-daily trips by van to the settlement from the park visitors center. The Hensley Settlement is only about 12 miles from the visitors center as the crow flies, but it takes 45 minutes to get there, thanks to the rough, winding road you have to take.
The van comfortably seated the 14 people who went on my tour, as well as the driver. I was lucky enough to get to sit up front next to the driver on the trip up the mountain. It was a hot, humid summer day, but an ideal time to visit. At the bottom of the mountain, the rhododendrons were in bloom, and the mountain laurel was in bloom on top.
The Hensley Settlement has a fascinating history. It dates to 1903, when Sherman Hensley, his pregnant wife, Nicey Ann, and their son moved into a cabin on the mountain to farm land given to Sherman by his father-in-law. That same year, the Hensleys were joined by Willie Gibbons and his family. The Hensleys and Gibbonses were related by marriage.
What it was like
Within a few years, the settlement had more than 100 inhabitants. Part of the growth came from the fact that the residents had big families. Sherman and Nicey Ann Hensley had 19 children.
The people lived isolated, self-sufficient lives without the benefit of electricity, telephones or running water. The settlement had its own gristmill, a school and a cemetery. For a small community, the Hensley Settlement had a big cemetery, primarily because of a high infant mortality rate. Nine of the Hensley children died young.
The men went off the mountain about once a week to trade for goods they couldn't produce themselves, according to a book published on the settlement by the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park. The women ventured off once every six weeks or so, but the children rarely saw the outside world before age 16.
Gradually, as the children grew up, they moved off the mountain. Coal mines in the area offered good jobs, and some of the young men married women from off the mountain who refused to live in the settlement. It became harder for the older people who stayed behind to operate the farms.
Sherman Hensley, the first person to move to the settlement, was also the last to leave. His children tried repeatedly to get him to move, and they finally succeeded in 1951. But the only way they could get Sherman to leave was to promise him that they would bury him on the mountain when he died. That promise was fulfilled when he died in 1979, and he was the last person buried in the Hensley Settlement's cemetery.
After the last people left the settlement, the land was sold to the National Park Service. The buildings on the mountain were in a poor state of repair by that time, so the structures seen today aren't the original buildings. But they are reconstructed on the original foundations.
When our group got to the top of the mountain, a little more than 3,000 feet above sea level, we were met by a park ranger who gave us a two-hour guided tour of the settlement. We walked about a mile to see everything.
Fantastic view
The mountain top was a beautiful place. It was a land of rolling meadows surrounded by split-rail fences. The tall grass in the meadows swayed in the afternoon breeze. Houses and outbuildings were scattered about, timber structures weathered by the elements. The only sounds were the sounds of nature.
One word of advice: Bring insect repellent. The Hensleys may have abandoned the mountain decades ago, but hordes of ticks and flying insects remain. The people in my group were constantly swatting ticks off the backs and legs of others in the group.
The ranger first took us to the farm of Willie Gibbons. His home is no longer standing. The reconstructed house burned down several years ago under mysterious circumstances, and just the stone chimney remains.
From there, we went to Lige Gibbons' home, a four-room house with uncomfortably low ceilings. The ranger told us a story about how one of the settlement's residents, who made moonshine, hid out in the house from the revenuers. The lawmen were watching all the doors, but the moonshiner still got away. He escaped through a trap door in the living room, crawled under the house and ran off into the woods before the lawmen could arrest him, the ranger told us.
We also visited the school and the neatly kept cemetery. The ranger told us that the Hensley descendants still gather at the old school every summer for a family reunion. As many as 400 people attend these reunions.
At the end of the tour, the van was waiting to take us back down the mountain.
The trip back was equally interesting. When we got halfway down, we found that a small tree had fallen across the logging road. There was no way around it.
The ranger, who came back down with us, suggested radioing the park headquarters to send another van to rescue us. But one man in our group said that we could take care of the problem ourselves. So the eight adult men in the van got out, picked up the tree, which was about 3 or 4 inches in diameter, and threw it down over the side of the mountain. We then continued on to the visitors center.
The fallen tree just added to the adventure.
XWilderness Road Tours of Middlesboro, Ky., offers daily tours to the Hensley Settlement, May through October. The cost is $12 for adults and $6 for children. Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park at (606)248-2817, Extension 1075.