cove
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cove noun A sheltered valley mainly or entirely enclosed by ridges and having a relatively level floor, arable land, and a single drainage outlet. The term is used in place names, especially in the Smoky Mountains, as in Cades Cove (TN), Big Cove (NC). [by analogy with the marine counterpart; DARE labels this usage “especially South Midland”]
1774 Dunmore’s War 3 This day I leave this neighborhood to go towards the Rye Coves. 1860 Week in Smokies 124 I saw scarcely any calico, and of course crinoline has never penetrated these coves of the mountains. 1864 Brown CW Letters (Aug 22) the twelth india[na] caverly gite whip every time they go in the Cove but we have bin over thare twice and they dont show them selves and if we were to se them i dont think we wold run with loded guns. 1931 Burns Coves Blount Co 46 In the southern part of Sevier [County], and in Blount County, there is a group of three large and very interesting coves. They lie completely imbedded among the mountains. The first two are surrounded by these ridges which occur in the space between the main Unaka Range and the outlier-Chilhowee Mountain; the third lies immediately at the base of the main range. They all have nearly the same dimensions, ranging from five to six miles in length, and from one and a half to two miles in breadth. 1959 Pearsall Little Smoky 28 Everywhere in the mountains there are sections of lower and smoother land that can be placed under profitable cultivation, but they are scattered across the map in a patchwork arrangement along stream valleys and in basins and “coves.” a1975 Lunsford It Used to Be 70 A cove is a place in the mountains where two ridges go up to the top of the mountain, and between the two ridges the waters coursed. There would be a spring near the top of the mountain. Some of those fields would be cleared up, and the hollow, or cove,—that would be the smaller cove—and there could be a cove with many smaller ridges, or smaller coves in it, but it’d be a larger range coming down, and that would make the bigger cove, all of it steep land. 1986 Back Home Blount Co 91 The Chilhowee Mountains, which are the outlying front of the Great Smoky Mountains over-thrust fault, shield the approach to areas known as “coves”: Miller’s Cove, Tuckaleechee Cove, and Cades Cove. In the overlying Precambrian-Cambrian rocks, which are dominated by shales, sandstone, and graywacke, these “coves” are geological windows through which the younger Ordivician limestones have been exposed by millions of years of erosion. This overthrust dates to the extensive mountain building Permian period of the Paleozoic era some 220 to 270 million years ago. 1988 Moore Roadside Guide 29 In several areas [of the Great Smoky Mountains] erosion has weathered through the older Pre-cambrian rocks, exposing the younger Paleozoic rocks beneath the thrust fault. Areas where the Paleozoic limestones and shales have been exposed have formed mountain coves such as Cades Cove and Wears Cove. These coves are surrounded by older and topographically higher rock strata to form “windows” down into the younger (limestone) strata of the cove. The fertile, deep soils produced by the weathering of the limestone made the coves attractive places for pioneers to settle and farm.