McLemore Cove

McLemore Cove is the triangle of farmland held between Lookout Mountain on the west and Pigeon Mountain on the east, closed at the south where the two mountains meet. It takes its name from Robert and John McLemore, sons of a white trader and a Cherokee mother. In 1994 the National Register listed the whole of it as one place: the McLemore Cove Historic District, 50,141 acres, with 262 contributing buildings, 15 structures, 15 sites and one object.

The district is farms. Its listing names complexes like the James W. Coulter farm at the crossroads of West Cove Road and Highway 193, and the Dougherty farm, and buildings put up by the stonemasons George Cornish and John B. Bell. The county counts antebellum houses among them and others built into the 1890s. The cove lies about three miles south of Chickamauga, and the way in is eight miles west of LaFayette on Highway 193 to Davis Crossroads.

That crossroads gave its name to a skirmish. On September 10 and 11, 1863, a week before Chickamauga, a Union force under James Negley pushed toward Pigeon Mountain meaning to cross it and take LaFayette, found Confederates gathering at Dug Gap, and pulled back.