A Tennessee Overhill Experience - From Furs to Factories Historical Markers
This trail tells the story of land and people and how the Industrial Revolution in the Upland South shaped both. Museums and historic sites reveal the stories of Cherokee settlements, European explorers, fur traders, miners, mill workers, railroaders, and farmers – the ordinary people who came to the Tennessee Overhill to live and work. There are 15 interpretive sites on this driving trail.
McMinn County Courthouse Square
The courthouse square traditionally was the social, economic, and political center of county seats across the South. A succession of enterprises—dry goods stores, a laundry and tailor shop, stagecoach . . . — — Map (db m177734) HM
Expansion of textile manufacturing into the Southern states provided the first large-scale “public work” opportunities for local women. Englewood’s textile workforce, from the workers of the first spinning mill built on a nearby farm in . . . — — Map (db m109276) HM
The Louisville and Nashville (L&N) built Etowah between 1904 and 1906 as division headquarters for its new Cincinnati to Atlanta line. Workers were transferred from other L&N facilities or recruited from nearby farming communities, other states, and . . . — — Map (db m109275) HM
Prosperous farmer, railroad investor, and legislator, I. T. Lenoir deeded a track of his farm in 1858 for the location of a railroad depot on the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad which bisected the fledging town of Sweetwater. Within a few years, . . . — — Map (db m117113) HM
Tellico Plains
Early Iron and Logging Industries
Tellico Plains’ first industrial venture, the Tellico Iron Works, started around 1825 with the construction of a foundry by an early white settler. Local legend, however, holds that native . . . — — Map (db m116822) HM
From the beginning of the eighteenth century until the American Revolution, Cherokee hunters and trappers traded tens of thousands of animal pelts for manufactured goods imported by licensed British traders. The first resident trader in the Overhill . . . — — Map (db m116823) HM
According to legend, Nancy Ward (Nanye’hi or Na-ni) was born in the 1730s at Chota in the Overhill Towns, at a time when Cherokee society was largely traditional despite the extensive fur trade. As the child of a Cherokee woman, Nancy was by birth a . . . — — Map (db m109274) HM
Mining in the Copper Basin
In 1843, a prospector, hoping to find gold south of the Coker Creek mine fields, instead located one of America's richest copper reserves. Over the next century, American and foreign companies chartered more . . . — — Map (db m116819) HM
