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The period of land buying for the creation of the National Park in the Smokies was one charged with emotions both among supporters of the park movement, and on the part of those who called this land their home. When purchasing began in the late twenties it was not uncommon for inhabitants of the Smokies to fight tooth and nail for their mountain homes, for which the Government was often offering prices that landowners considered to be drastically reduced. An act passed by Congress in 1932 offers a resolution to this problem that allowed for certain residents to maintain lifetime leases from the government. Although these leases were usually issued to residents who were coming into their last years of life or were too sick to leave their homes, there were sometimes exceptions made.

The Walker Sisters of Little Greenbrier are certainly among the most famous of those that were deemed eligible to receive a lifetime lease on their property, just a mile from the Little Greenbrier School. The 5 sisters, Margaret, Martha, Polly, Louisa and Hettie were raised in what would become known as the “Five Sisters Cove”, by their father John N. Walker and mother Margaret Jane King Walker.

The 5 unmarried Walker Sisters were granted their lifetime lease in 1941, allowing them to stay in their home in Five Sisters Cove, but their lives became more difficult with the newly created national park surrounding their property. Establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park meant that the ladies could no longer hunt or trap, cut timber, or allow their livestock to freely graze the area. Life was likely also made more difficult with each passing year as residents still living in the park area became fewer and more widely dispersed doing away with community necessities such as stores and grist mills. This forced the Walker Sisters to look past the boundaries of the park occasionally to purchase the things that they could not make such as flour, sugar and medicines.

Despite the challenges the Walker Sisters still led their lives, as they had chosen, on their secluded mountain farm as the decades passed much as they did at the beginning of the twentieth century. They farmed, kept livestock, carded and spun wool, weaved fabrics, and made their own clothing and just about everything else they needed. Although the last two Walker Sisters lived on into the 1960s, they never had electricity or indoor plumbing in their cabin, not because they did not understand and know about it, but because they had no desire to have it.

It was their making choices like this that drew visitors to their little cabin in the woods. The lifestyle of the Walker Sisters was an excellent educational opportunity for visitors who had often forgotten or had never been exposed to this way of life. The Walker Sisters portrayed the sustainability of what many considered to be a simple life in a world that grew up around them at an ever-quickening pace.

Although Louisa, the last Walker Sister living in their homeplace in Little Greenbrier passed away in 1964, it is still possible to visit the Walker home, which is still sitting on its original foundations on the Walker farmstead. It is an easy, one-mile walk to the Walker Sister place from the Little Greenbrier School not far from Metcalf Bottoms Picnic Area. Visiting the Walker Sister House is like visiting the sisters themselves, making time stand still, giving the visitor a chance to take a break from the busy outside world.