History
Spence Field is named after James Spence, a settler who built a cabin at the field in 1830. Spence and his wife, Caroline Law, were connected with the Cades Cove area, but preferred the solitude of the high mountains. They lived and herded livestock at Spence Field during the warmer months, only rarely visiting the lower elevations. Historian Durwood Dunn, describing the Spences' eschewal of the more populated bottomlands, explains:
A few days before the birth of their son Robert in 1840, she (Caroline Spence) walked alone ten miles to their home in the White Oak Cove in order to be near neighbors who could assist her. Other than such emergencies as childbirth and the approach of winter, however, nothing could induce them to leave their mountain.
John Oliver, the first settler in Cades Cove, claimed that Spence burned trees and cleared Spence Field in the 1830s, lending credence to the argument that Spence Field is not a natural bald. Regardless, the field was still being used as a summer-time pasture in 1900, where thousands of cows, horses, sheep, and goats grazed while the bottomlands were used for planting crops.
Arnold Guyot, who surveyed much of the Smokies crest in the late 1850s, measured the elevation of "Spence cabin" at 4,910 feet (1,500 m). Author Horace Kephart frequented Spence Field— specifically a herder's shack at Spence known as "Spencer cabin"— in the early 1900s.
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