In the 1790s settlers, legally or illegally, began taking over former Cherokee land in the Smokies, beginning with two of the broader lowland valleys, the Oconaluftee and Cades Cove. As the Cherokees yielded more and more land, by treaty or to theft, settlement by the new Americans proceeded up other valleys, until by 1826 almost every watershed was occupied by at least a few families. Clearing and occupation of land continued through the 19th century, the largest concentrations developing in the Sugarlands (along the West Prong of Little Pigeon River), Greenbrier Cove, and Cataloochee, in addition to the earliest areas of settlement. In 1926, when land buying for the newly authorized park began, there were 1,200 farms and 7,300 people within the park boundaries. By this time, however, farming in the Smokies had passed its peak. By contrast with earlier Indian inhabitants, the farmers had considerable impact on the land. Most obvious was the removal of forest to make homesites, cropland, and pastures. By 1902, eight percent of the land on the Tennessee side of the Smokies and seven percent on the North Carolina side had been cleared. As settlement proceeded up a hollow farmers were confronted with steeper and steeper slopes. The inevitable results of trying to raise corn on the sides of mountains were rapid loss of fertility and then of the soil itself, as the heavy rains leached out nutrients and washed away first the humus and then the mineral soil beneath. In this wilderness where virgin land was still abundant, many mountaineers simply cleared a new patch when the old one gave out. Horace Kephart, a midwesterner who lived among such farmers on the North Carolina side early in the 20th century, recorded their approach to cultivation. They would clear land and get out two or three crops of corn. “When corn won’t grow no more I can turn the field into grass a couple of years,” Kephart’s informant says. “Then you’ll rotate, and grow corn again?” Kephart asks, a bit ingenuously. “La, no! By that time the land will be so poor hit wouldn’t raise a cuss-fight.” “But then you must move, and begin all over again.” Kephart counters. “This continual moving must be a great nuisance.” Kephart overstates the case, however, because most stayed in one house for two to three generations, or about 50 to 75 years.