Last updated: April 22, 2026
- Type: Unincorporated community / rural cove
- Location: North side of the Tennessee River Gorge in eastern Marion County, along Mullins Cove Road, below the rim of Raccoon Mountain and within the footprint of Prentice Cooper State Forest
- Earliest documented settlement: 1807–1811, by Henry Long (1782–1875) and Zilpha Long (1792–1860), on a 2,000-acre tract
- Notable feature: Long Cemetery #2, a family burial ground partially submerged by Nickajack Lake; three tombstones remain visible at the water line
Setting
Mullins Cove lies on the north side of the Tennessee River Gorge, the 26-mile canyon that carries the river from the edge of Chattanooga down to Nickajack Dam. The cove is reached by Mullins Cove Road, which descends from the plateau rim and winds along the river's edge inside the gorge. Prentice Cooper State Forest covers the surrounding ridges on the north rim, so the cove's uplands are public land, while the valley floor along the shoreline is a mix of private parcels, TVA-managed drawdown zone, and lake surface.
Before the river was impounded, the cove was the mouth of a steep, forested drainage that came down off the plateau through fertile bottom land, and was covered by dense canebrake from the rim to the river. It was shielded from the outside world by the gorge walls on one side and the Cumberland Plateau on the other, which is one reason it was slow to be settled and slow to lose its early 19th-century character.
Henry and Zilpha Long
The recorded history of Mullins Cove begins with Henry Long and his wife Zilpha Long. Henry, born in 1782, moved into the cove in 1807; he and Zilpha, born in 1792, married in 1808 and by 1811 were in possession of a 2,000-acre tract that covered much of the cove. Zilpha died in 1860; Henry died in 1875. Their descendants remained in the cove through the rest of the 19th century.
This was early for Euro-American settlement in what is now Marion County. The Cherokee Lower Towns had been broken up by the Nickajack Expedition of 1794, and small numbers of white settlers began filtering into the river valley in the first decade of the 1800s, but much of the area was not legally opened until the Calhoun Treaty of 1819. The Longs were among the first documented families in the gorge, a generation ahead of most of the ridge and valley settlement east of Battle Creek. Surnames associated with the cove and its neighbors, Long, Mullins, Doran, Inman, Coppinger, carried forward into the later county census rolls.
Long Cemetery #2 and the rising river
The family burial ground that eventually became known as Long Cemetery #2 sat on low ground near the river's edge. In the 1920s the Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power Company, soon consolidated into Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO), added flashboards to the crest of Hales Bar Dam, raising the pool upstream roughly three feet to about 629 feet above sea level. That raise put the cemetery under water long before TVA took over the dam in 1939. Headstones that had stood on the riverbank became headstones standing in the edge of the lake.
In 1944, the Tennessee Valley Authority concluded a formal agreement with Long family descendants. Rather than relocating the remains, the agreement was to leave the burials in place. The TVA position has been that the flooding predated its involvement and that the 1944 understanding controls. When Nickajack Dam replaced Hales Bar in 1967, Nickajack Lake settled at roughly 633 feet above sea level, and the cemetery remained at or near the surface year-round rather than being buried under deeper water.
Three tombstones still stand at the site, cracked and weathered, tilting above the water line. Each carries a shared engraving of a hand with one finger pointing skyward. The graves are those of Henry Long, Zilpha Long, and their great-grandson Moses Merritt Long, born in November 1880 to Rhoda Greer Long and named for her father Moses Greer, who died three months later in February 1881. The cemetery is accessible only by boat and is one of the most unusual surviving 19th-century burial sites on the Tennessee River.
McNabb Mines and the gorge economy
In the early 1880s, David McNabb came down the Tennessee River from upper East Tennessee and opened a small coal-mining operation on the slope above the cove, at the southern end of Walden's Ridge. The works became known as the McNabb Mines, and a small workers' settlement grew up around them. The mines closed in the early 20th century. The land is now inside Prentice Cooper State Forest, and the stone ruins of the mine structures and associated buildings can still be seen from Mullins Cove Road as it winds along the north side of the gorge.
Present day
Mullins Cove today is a rural residential cove with a small permanent population, a handful of lakeside properties, and broad public land on the ridges above. Mullins Cove Road, a winding paved county road, is the main access. The cove is a jumping-off point for Prentice Cooper's trails, including sections of the Cumberland Trail, and for boat access into the gorge. It has no post office of its own, no incorporated status, and no commercial center, it is better understood as a named valley and a scattered rural settlement rather than a town.
Related
Henry and Zilpha Long profile →
Tennessee River Gorge →
Haletown and Guild →
Hales Bar Dam →
First settlers of Marion County →