Communities of Marion County, Tennessee

Coppinger Cove

A plateau-escarpment cove named for an Irish-immigrant family

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Last updated: April 28, 2026

Coppinger Cove is a secluded hollow on the western escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau in Marion County. The Little Sequatchie River flows through the cove on its 19.6-mile journey from the plateau to the Sequatchie Valley floor, and the cove road follows the river through terrain of rocky cliffs, dense hardwood forest, caves, and small-scale farmland. The cove takes its name from the Coppinger family, who settled in the area in the early-to-mid 1800s and whose descendants figured in some of the most dramatic events in Marion County history.

View from the Cumberland Plateau escarpment looking across the Sequatchie Valley, with Walden Ridge five miles in the distance
The Sequatchie Valley seen from the Cumberland Plateau escarpment. Coves like Coppinger Cove nestle in the hollows where the plateau breaks down toward the valley floor. Photo: Jstephenconn, 2013 (CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).

Setting

In Appalachian terminology, a "cove" is a valley enclosed on three sides by ridges, open on one end. Coppinger Cove fits this pattern: ridges of the Cumberland Plateau rise steeply on three sides, and the Little Sequatchie River drains out the open end toward the Sequatchie community on the valley floor. The cove is part of a network of interconnected hollows along the plateau escarpment, with neighboring coves including Dixon Cove, Bryant Cove, Indian Cove, Sequatchie Cove, and Petercave Cove. Access is from Valley View Highway (the road connecting Jasper and Whitwell) via Coppinger Cove Road, though driving conditions vary with the weather.

The geology is classic Cumberland Plateau karst: limestone dissolution has created caves, sinkholes, and underground streams beneath the sandstone caprock. Ship Cave, at the base of a large cliff in the cove, has two large openings where Ship Creek resurges after running underground. The cave system drew the attention of the Southeastern Regional Association of Cave Surveys (SERA), which held its 2017 Summer Cave Carnival in the area. Waterfalls, including Abraham Falls and Mike's Branch Falls, appear along tributary streams after heavy rain.

The place name comes from the Coppinger family, one of several Marion County coves that carry the name of a pioneer household. Neighboring Mullins Cove and the unincorporated Doran Cove follow the same pattern, with the Long, Doran, Inman, Mullins, and Coppinger surnames moving through the early 19th-century rolls of this stretch of the plateau together.

Cherokee and pre-Cherokee presence

Before Anglo-American settlement, the plateau escarpment above the Sequatchie Valley floor was part of the Cherokee homeland and, before that, of the much older Indigenous landscape of the Tennessee River country. Archaic (roughly 8000 to 1000 BC) and Woodland (roughly 1000 BC to AD 1000) peoples used the plateau's caves, rockshelters, and spring heads for hunting and seasonal camps; the karst features that still shelter the cove today, Ship Cave chief among them, are the same kinds of sites that earlier peoples used. Coppinger Cove itself has not produced the kind of dense archaeological record that the river flats downstream at Nickajack and Running Water or the shell middens at Shellmound have, but the plateau-edge coves across Marion County generally carried light but continuous Indigenous use.

By the 18th century, the broader region was claimed and held by the Chickamauga (Lower) Cherokee who anchored their towns on the Tennessee River a short distance south. Nickajack and Running Water, destroyed in the 1794 Nickajack Expedition, sat within a day's travel of the Little Sequatchie headwaters. Under the Treaty of 1819, Cherokee reservees held 640-acre tracts along Battle Creek and near present-day Jasper; that window of coexistence closed by the mid-1820s through local violence and, for those who remained, with the 1838 Trail of Tears. The Cherokee Nation, today a sovereign nation headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, traces a portion of its ancestry through the families who held this stretch of the plateau. For the fuller regional picture, see The Cherokee Lower Towns, Dragging Canoe, and the 1794 Nickajack Expedition.

The Coppinger family

The cove's namesake family traces to Higgins Coppinger (1738, Ballyvolane Castle, County Cork, Ireland, to January 4, 1832, Washington County, Tennessee), a Revolutionary War veteran who settled in upper East Tennessee. His descendants moved south and west through the state's valleys over the following generations. Walter Coppinger (born c. 1790, Tellico Plains, Monroe County) married Rachel Tussey, and their son Alexander Coppinger (1821 to 1863) lived in the Sequatchie area of Marion County. Alexander married Susan Allison and is buried in Lasater Cemetery. His death on May 31, 1863, during the Civil War, suggests the conflict touched the cove directly, though specific circumstances have not been documented in available sources.

The Coppinger family appears in James L. Douthat's Sequatchie Families: Biographical Sketches of the Earlier Settlers of the Sequatchie Valley of Tennessee (1983), one of the standard genealogical references for the region. The surname appears alongside Long, Mullins, Doran, and Inman in the cove-edge rolls of the early 19th century, and the first-settler chronology for Marion County's plateau-edge coves is laid out on the First Settlers page.

Sheriff Coppinger and the 1927 Christmas shootout

The most well-known Coppinger from Marion County is Sheriff George Washington "Wash" Coppinger, who was killed on Christmas night, December 25, 1927, in South Pittsburg. The incident grew out of a labor dispute at the H. Wetter Manufacturing Company stove factory. When the company tried to reopen with non-union labor, tensions between the county sheriff's office and South Pittsburg city police escalated. Sheriff Coppinger, along with deputies, responded to a confrontation where city officers had held a county deputy at gunpoint. When the sheriff attempted to make an arrest, gunfire erupted. Six law enforcement officers died: Sheriff Coppinger, Deputy Langford A. Hennessey, City Marshals Benjamin Parker and Ewing Smith, Wetter guard Oran H. LaRowe, and Police Chief James Connor (who died the following day).

Sheriff Coppinger and his wife Sarah E. are buried in Bean-Roulston Cemetery. A Tennessee Historical Commission marker (2B-32, HMdb #99022) was dedicated July 20, 2014 at the intersection of Cedar Avenue and Third Street in South Pittsburg, the location of the gun battle. The shootout is one of the deadliest single incidents in Tennessee law-enforcement history. See the dedicated 1927 Christmas Night Shootout page for the full account, including the verbatim Tennessee Historical Commission marker text and the contemporary South Pittsburg Hustler coverage from January 5, 1928.

Church, school, and cemetery

Coppinger Cove Baptist Church (Southern Baptist Convention) stands at 1365 Coppinger Cove Road, Sequatchie, TN 37374, and remains an active congregation. The USGS stream gage on the Little Sequatchie River is identified as "Little Sequatchie River NR Coppinger Chapel, TN" (Station 03571485), indicating that an earlier Coppinger Chapel was a recognized landmark, though whether it was a predecessor of the current Baptist church or a separate structure is unclear.

Coppinger's Cove School is listed among the historic schools of Marion County on the TNGenWeb site (see historical schools roster). Dates of operation have not been recovered from available sources. Coppinger Cemetery, a family burial ground, is also documented in Marion County records.

Sequatchie Cove Farm and Creamery

In recent decades, Coppinger Cove has drawn attention for artisan agriculture. Sequatchie Cove Farm, a 300-acre diversified operation established in 1996 by Bill and Miriam Keener along with Miriam's parents Jim and Emily Wright, sits on Dixon Cove Road along the Little Sequatchie River, where Dixon Cove and Coppinger Cove overlap. The farm produces grass-fed meats, organic vegetables, eggs, and seasonal produce using biodynamic practices, and sells at farmers' markets in Chattanooga and Nashville.

The Sequatchie Cove Creamery, the farm's cheese operation, is located at 2216 Coppinger Cove Road, placing it squarely within the cove. Among their cheeses is one named "Coppinger": a semi-soft washed-rind cheese with a decorative layer of vegetable ash, aged 60 to 90 days, in the tradition of ash-lined French styles like Morbier. The creamery describes their home as a "secluded hollow" at the base of the Cumberland Plateau. The Coppinger cheese has been recognized by national cheese publications and is distributed to specialty shops across the Southeast.

Off-road recreation

Coppinger Cove Road, a county-maintained gravel road that follows the Little Sequatchie River, has become a regionally known off-road destination. After heavy rain, the road features deep water crossings (some three to four feet), rock gardens, and mud. The route connects to the Coalmont OHV Park (1,347 acres) atop the plateau and links with trails through Bryant Cove, Indian Cove, Sequatchie Cove, and Petercave Cove in a broader loop system. River fords, cave entrances, and waterfalls mark the route.

Present day

Coppinger Cove remains a lightly populated hollow with scattered homes, farms, and the Baptist church along Coppinger Cove Road. The postal address is Sequatchie, TN 37374. The combination of artisan agriculture, cave exploration, and off-road recreation has brought the cove more outside attention in recent years than at any time since the Coppinger family first cleared its bottomland in the 1800s.

Landmarks and features

Related

Sequatchie community →
Mullins Cove →
Victoria →
The Sequatchie Valley →
First settlers of Marion County →
The 1927 Christmas Night Shootout →

Sources