Cades Cove Methodist Church

A little farther along stands the Cades Cove Methodist Church — probably the most photographed of the three churches, that classic white chapel with the modest steeple.

Here's the part visitors love. This building went up in 1902, and it was built by the congregation's own pastor, a man named John Douglas McCampbell, who happened also to be a carpenter. He raised the entire church in one hundred and fifteen days, at a cost of one hundred and fifteen dollars. A dollar a day, more or less, for a building that's still standing and still beautiful a hundred and twenty years later.

Now, look at the front. You'll notice two doors, side by side. Visitors love to guess at the reason, and the popular story is that one door was for men and one for women, who sat on separate sides. It's a nice story — but the plainer truth is that two front doors were simply a common church design of the eighteen-hundreds, and this congregation built from a familiar plan. Whether the men and women of this particular cove actually split up at the doors, well — that part's been polished by a century of retelling.

Step inside and you'll find simple wooden pews and tall windows that pour light across the floor. Like the other churches here, its cemetery holds cove families going back generations. It's a small building that says a lot about who these people were — poor in money, rich in the skill of their own hands.