East Tennessee History · County by county
The only Tennessee county named for a woman: a frontier county cut from Hawkins and Knox in 1796, a court that moved from house to house until Rutledge, a crossroads tavern on the roads to Kentucky and New Orleans, a mountain that splits the county in two, a Unionist vote and a hard war, a December battle around the tavern, a mineral-springs resort that drew the wealthy, two TVA lakes and a tomato people drive a long way to buy.
Grainger County lies in the Ridge and Valley country northeast of Knoxville, between the Holston River on the south and the Clinch River on the north. [S520] It is the only county in Tennessee named for a woman: Mary Grainger Blount, wife of territorial governor William Blount. [S520][S38] The legislature created it in 1796, the year Tennessee became a state, from parts of Hawkins and Knox counties. [S520][S530][S526]
The early county was big, and later acts cut pieces of it into other counties. [S38][S531] Its court met in several places until a courthouse went up at Rutledge in 1801. [S520][S532] Bean Station, at the meeting of the road to Kentucky and the road from Washington to New Orleans, had one of the best-known taverns in the South. [S520][S533] Clinch Mountain runs the length of the county and splits it into a southern half and a northern half. [S520][S530]
Grainger voters turned down secession in 1861 by more than three to one, and the war that followed was close to a guerrilla war. [S530][S520] In December 1863 Confederate General James Longstreet turned on the Union cavalry following him and fought the Battle of Bean’s Station around the tavern. [S521][S535][S552] After the war, mineral springs under Clinch Mountain drew resort crowds to Tate Springs. [S520][S544] In the 1930s and 1940s TVA’s Norris and Cherokee dams put lakes on both sides of the county. [S520][S359][S555] Today Grainger is still mostly small farms and small towns, known across the region for the Grainger County tomato. [S520][S557][S558]
Mary Grainger was the daughter of Kaleb Grainger of North Carolina, as the state Blue Book spells his name. [S38] She married William Blount. When he became governor of the Territory South of the River Ohio, the federal territory that came before the state of Tennessee, she became its first lady. [S38][S520] The Blue Book gives no birth year for her and lists 1802 as the year she died. [S38]
That makes Grainger different from its neighbors. Knox, Hawkins, Claiborne, Anderson and Campbell were all named for men: soldiers, judges and politicians. [S38] No other Tennessee county was named for a woman, and the Tennessee Encyclopedia opens its Grainger entry on that point. [S520]
The Blounts’ house in Knoxville, Blount Mansion, served as the home and capitol of the territorial governor, his family and the people he enslaved. [S145] It is preserved today as a National Historic Landmark and museum, the best place to see the world Mary Grainger Blount lived in. [S145]
The act that created Grainger County passed on April 22, 1796, according to a short history of the county written by Betty Allen in 1997 and posted by the county’s genealogy project. [S532] The act’s text survives in the county’s private-acts compilation kept by the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service (CTAS). It ran the new county’s lines from the road between Bull’s Gap and the iron works on Mossy Creek, over to the Kentucky road north of the Holston, north to the Virginia line, and back down along the ridges between Richland and Flat creeks to the river. [S526] It named five commissioners, among them Major Lea and James Blair, to pick a central spot and build a courthouse, a prison and stocks. [S526] It also set a temporary property tax to pay for them, including a tax on enslaved people between ten and fifty years old. [S526]
The first county court met on June 13, 1796, at the house of Benjamin McCarty, about two miles below present-day Rutledge, as the act directed. [S532][S526] The justices chose Ambrose Yancey as clerk and Martin Ashburn as sheriff. [S532]
Within a few years Grainger began to lose land. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says the original county took in parts of today’s Campbell, Claiborne, Hamblen and Union counties. [S520] The county archives and the county government’s history page give a longer list: Anderson, Claiborne, Campbell, Scott, Hancock, Union and Hamblen. [S531][S530] The Blue Book’s creation notes explain the gap between the two lists. It names Grainger as a parent of Anderson and Claiborne (both 1801), Union (1850) and Hamblen (1870). [S38] Campbell, Hancock and Scott were made later from pieces of Grainger’s daughter counties rather than from Grainger itself. [S38] So both lists are right in their own way. One counts every county that holds old Grainger ground. The other counts only the counties Grainger itself gave land to.
The lines kept shifting farm by farm well into the twentieth century. CTAS lists more than two dozen acts that moved a single family’s land between Grainger and Jefferson, Knox, Hawkins, Hancock or Union. [S526]
Picking a county seat took years. Until 1801 the court met in several places: John Bunch’s, Martin Ashburn’s, Mitchell’s Spring, and sometimes at a spot on the north side of Clinch Mountain. [S532][S520] An act passed on October 28, 1797, named new commissioners. One of them was George Bean, senior, of the Bean Station family. [S526] The act told them to lay out a town of forty lots "to be known by the name of Rutledge," in honor of George Rutledge of Sullivan County. They were to finish between December 1797 and March 1798. [S526][S520] Allen’s history says the first courthouse was finished in 1801, near the site of the present one, and built by Francis Mayberry. [S532]
The founding date depends on which source you read. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says Rutledge was founded in 1798, which fits the 1797 act’s deadline. [S520][S526] The state municipal service (MTAS) lists the town’s incorporation act as Private Acts 1797, chapter 13. Oddly, it gives the incorporation date as February 1, 1797, months before that act passed. [S527][S526] CTAS’s own summary, in the same compilation, credits an 1799 act with ordering the town laid out. [S526] We use "laid out in 1797–98, courthouse in 1801." The record shows a town planned at the end of the 1790s and a working county seat by 1801.
Rutledge stayed small. In 1830 it was counted at about 150 people, with one school, one church, three stores, two taverns, two hatters, two blacksmiths, a saddler and two tanners. [S532] The county academy, Madison Academy, was running by about 1842. Rutledge’s first newspapers, The Enterprise and the East Tennessee Eagle, began in the 1880s. [S532] The old county jail of 1848 still stands in town. The Grainger County Historical Society restored it in 1984. [S543]
Bean Station grew up at one of the most important road junctions in early Tennessee. The Tennessee Encyclopedia puts it where the Old Kentucky Road, today’s U.S. 25E, crossed the New Orleans to Washington Road, today’s U.S. 11W. [S520] A 1929 marker from the Daughters of the American Revolution describes the same spot in older terms. Daniel Boone’s trail met the "great war path of the Cherokees" here. Later the Baltimore-to-Nashville stage road crossed the turnpike from Kentucky to Carolina. [S533] TVA says the Great Indian Warpath that Boone once followed crossed the basin that Cherokee Lake now fills. [S555] After 1834 a stage left Bean Station three times a week for Lexington, Kentucky, over the Wilderness Road, carrying freight, mail and passengers. [S523]
Who founded the town depends on the source. The Tennessee Encyclopedia credits George Bean Sr., a goldsmith, jeweler and gunmaker. [S520] The 1929 DAR marker tells a longer story. William Bean and Daniel Boone camped here in 1775. An early settler named English was killed. The place was settled for good by William Bean II, Robert, George and Jessie Bean, who received more than 3,000 acres along German Creek for service in the Revolution. [S533] A 1991 Ruritan marker says the Bean Fort across 11W was built by William Bean, "first permanent white settler in Tennessee." [S534] The safest reading is that a Bean family settled here in the late 1700s, and a George Bean was prominent enough to serve as a Rutledge commissioner in 1797. [S526] On the markers, the earliest story is told around William.
The tavern was the town’s claim to fame, and the sources disagree on its date too. The Tennessee Encyclopedia calls the Bean Station Hotel "nationally renowned." [S520] The 1929 marker says the Whiteside Inn was built in 1811 and the Bean Station Inn in 1814. It calls the inn the largest tavern between Washington and New Orleans and lists John Sevier, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Henry Clay and Andrew Johnson among its guests. [S533] The 1991 marker repeats the "largest tavern" claim and names Polk, Johnson and Jackson as guests. [S534] The Civil War Trails marker describes the tavern at the 1863 battle as a large brick building, and the Tennessee Encyclopedia calls it L-shaped. [S521][S535] We have not found a primary record that settles whether the 1814 inn and the tavern of the battle were the same building. Read the markers as local tradition.
Bean Station did not become a town in law until recently, and the two official sources disagree by a year. The Tennessee Encyclopedia calls it the county’s most recently chartered town, chartered in 1997. [S520] MTAS lists its incorporation under the general law mayor-aldermanic charter as January 1, 1996. [S528]
At the county’s southwest corner, toward Knoxville, Blaine started as Blaine’s Crossroads, named for the home of Robert Blaine. [S520] It is old ground. A Tennessee Historical Commission marker placed in 1940 says the Emory Road was built from here southwest to the Clinch River about 1788. Haley’s Station, a pioneer fort, stood three miles east on Richland Creek. The Mouth-of-Richland Baptist Church was founded here in 1788. [S538]
Nearby, the Richland marker stands at a brick house built about 1796 for Major Lea and Lavinia Jarnagin Lea. It is one of the oldest houses in the county. Their ninth child, Albert Miller Lea, was born there in 1808. He later helped survey land in Tennessee and in present-day Iowa, and served as chief clerk to the U.S. secretary of war. [S539][S520] Shields Station, also near Blaine, was James McDaniel’s land in 1792. McDaniel was killed nearby by Indians. After 1833 it was a stagecoach stop run by Dr. Samuel Shields, and for years it served as a home, post office, store and dispensary. [S540]
Blaine incorporated on November 1, 1978, MTAS says. [S529] The Tennessee Encyclopedia calls it a Knoxville suburb now. [S520]
The county’s official history page also mentions Indian Cave, on the Holston near Blaine. It says Native people used the cave for centuries, a Cherokee village stood near it in the 1700s, and the Donelson party floated past it in 1779. Former Confederate general Robert Hoke bought it in 1869 and mined it for bat guano. Businessmen opened it as a show cave in 1924. The page says it has been closed to the public as of 2005, so it is not a stop on any history day. [S530]
Clinch Mountain is the county’s main landmark. It runs northeast to southwest through the county. Rutledge, Bean Station and Blaine are all on its south side, in the Holston valley. [S520][S530] North of the mountain, in the valley toward the Clinch River, are the communities of Thorn Hill, Washburn and Powder Springs. [S520] Gaps in the ridge mattered. Bean’s Station Gap figures in the 1863 battle, and before 1801 the county court sometimes met on the north side of the mountain. [S535][S532]
The split still shapes the county. The two halves now face different TVA lakes: Norris to the north and Cherokee to the south. [S520][S530]
Grainger has long been a farm county. The Tennessee Encyclopedia names tobacco as the main money crop and says cattle raising has been gaining. [S520] It describes a 19th-century economy of small trades serving scattered farms: gristmills, hatters, saddlers, tailors, lawyers and dry-goods merchants. Taverns along the stage roads served travelers. [S520] The 1830 snapshot of Rutledge, with its hatters, tanners, saddler and blacksmiths, fits that picture. [S532]
The Tennessee Encyclopedia calls the county’s industrial growth "marginal." It is our only source for most of what follows. [S520]
- The Shields family ran the Holston Paper Mill, one of the earliest local industries. [S520] - The Knoxville and Bristol Railway ran through the Richland Creek valley and was put out of business by floods. [S520] - Vegetable canneries of the 1910s closed when a tomato blight destroyed the crop they depended on. [S520] - The locally owned Clinchdale Lumber Company logged the county’s timber early in the 1900s. [S520] - Knitting mills and zinc mining later took timbering’s place, and black marble is quarried at Thorn Hill. [S520] - In 1974 the county built an industrial park, with what the encyclopedia calls mixed results. [S520]
We could not find a second public source for these business details, so treat them as the encyclopedia’s account. The encyclopedia also notes that by the time it was written, almost half the county’s workers drove to jobs in neighboring towns. [S520]
Before he was a congressman, governor or president, Andrew Johnson was a young tailor looking for work. A National Park Service history of his Greeneville home tells how he arrived in Greeneville in September 1826 with his mother and stepfather. He found only a little work there, because the town already had a tailor. He then moved on to Rutledge, where he rented a vacant building and worked at his trade for about six months. [S556] He went back to Greeneville in March 1827, married Eliza McCardle that May, and built his life there. [S556]
The state marker in Rutledge says he first set up his own business in a small brick building that was also the sheriff’s office. [S542] It gives a different reason for his return: his former employer in Greeneville died about six months later, and Johnson moved back. [S542] The Park Service history says he went back because conditions in Greeneville had changed and he could likely find work there. It adds that Eliza may have been part of the reason. [S556] Both agree on the six months and on Rutledge as the first shop he ran himself.
Like most of East Tennessee, Grainger did not want to leave the Union. In the secession referendum of June 8, 1861, the county’s voters rejected secession 1,756 to 495, according to the county government’s history page. [S530] DeWitt Clinton Senter, Grainger’s state representative, voted against secession. A state marker in Rutledge says Confederates jailed him and drove him from home, and he came back in 1865. [S541][S522]
The Tennessee Encyclopedia sums up the war in Grainger as "a state of near-guerrilla warfare" that brought economic, political and social chaos. [S520] Armies used the county’s roads between Knoxville, Cumberland Gap and upper East Tennessee, and after the big fight of 1863 the two sides "skirmished and foraged until spring." [S536]
The encyclopedia also says "a major skirmish occurred near Blaine around Christmas of 1862." [S520] We could not confirm that date. The Civil War Trails marker at Blaine and the National Park Service’s battle summary both describe a large Union-Confederate standoff at Blaine’s Crossroads in mid-December 1863, right after the Battle of Bean’s Station. [S536][S553] An 1862 fight there may have happened and not made it onto the markers we checked. But the Blaine’s Crossroads action that is well documented is the one from 1863.
In the fall of 1863 Longstreet’s corps was sent from the Confederate army at Chattanooga to retake Knoxville from Union General Ambrose Burnside. [S521][S554] The attack on Knoxville’s Fort Sanders on November 29 failed. When Union reinforcements under William T. Sherman approached, Longstreet gave up the siege on December 4 and marched northeast through Grainger County toward Rogersville. [S521][S554][S553] The Park Service summary has him at Rutledge on December 6 and Rogersville on the 9th. [S553]
Union General John G. Parke followed at a distance. He sent Brig. Gen. James M. Shackelford ahead with about 4,000 cavalry and infantry. By December 13 Shackelford was camped near Bean’s Station. [S553][S535] Longstreet saw a chance to destroy the Union horsemen, who were well ahead of their infantry support. He sent infantry straight at Bean’s Station and ordered cavalry around both flanks to block a retreat. William T. Martin’s division was to get behind the Federals, and William E. "Grumble" Jones’s men were to hold Bean’s Station Gap. [S521][S535]
The fight on December 14 centered on the tavern. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says the Union line straddled the Rutledge road, with artillery behind a creek west of the hotel and riflemen firing from inside the building. [S521] The two sides’ guns dueled all afternoon. The encyclopedia says one Confederate battery, Parker’s, fired 375 rounds before dark. [S521] Bushrod Johnson’s Tennessee brigade pressed below the road, and Archibald Gracie’s Alabama brigade pressed above it. Joseph Kershaw’s brigade was sent around the Union left. [S521] When the Federals saw the flanking move, they pulled back toward Rutledge and were gone by nightfall. [S521][S535]
The trap failed. Martin’s cavalry was held up at a river crossing and was not in place, and Jones could not stop the Federals from slipping west through the hills. [S521][S535] The next day Longstreet’s subordinates did not want to press an all-out pursuit. They pointed to short supplies and worn-out men, and Micah Jenkins would not attack without more troops. [S521][S535] The Federals fell back to Blaine’s Crossroads and entrenched there with Gordon Granger’s reinforcements. When Longstreet came up, he found the line too strong and pulled back. [S553][S536] His army crossed the Holston and went into winter quarters around Morristown and Russellville. [S536][S535]
The sources agree that Bean’s Station was a Confederate victory. [S552][S553] The Tennessee Encyclopedia and the Civil War Trails marker add that it failed to do what Longstreet wanted, which was to trap and destroy the Union cavalry. [S521][S535] The sources differ on several details:
- When it started. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says Confederate cavalry made contact with Union pickets about 2:00 p.m. [S521] The archived Park Service battle summary says one column was skirmishing with pickets "by 2:00 am." [S553] - How the Federals left. The encyclopedia says they "retired in good order." [S521] The Civil War Trails marker at Blaine says the Union forces "retreated in disorder." [S536] - Losses. The Park Service’s current battle database lists 337 casualties (115 Union, 222 Confederate). [S552] Its older battlefield-program summary estimated 1,600 (700 Union, 900 Confederate). [S553] A Camp Nelson National Monument page gives about 900 Confederate and 700 Union losses for the fighting. [S554] The gap probably comes down to what each count includes. We give all three. - Spelling. The Tennessee Encyclopedia and one line of the Civil War Trails marker spell the Union general "Shackleford." The Park Service and the Blaine marker use Shackelford, and we follow them. [S521][S535][S552][S536]
The fighting did not end at Bean’s Station. A Civil War Trails marker at Blaine tells of Union General James G. Spears making his headquarters at Stone’s Mill on Richland Creek. His troops clashed with Longstreet’s men on December 17. By December 21 Longstreet had set up headquarters at Shields Station. [S537] The marker at Blaine says the two sides "skirmished and foraged until spring." [S536]
The same Janeway Cabin marker tells one of the county’s best war stories. John Janeway, 17, joined the 14th Illinois Cavalry in June 1864 after meeting Union soldiers on his way to deliver corn to Massengill Mill. He gave his name as "January" so his parents could not find him. He was captured on Stoneman’s raid toward Macon, Georgia, and held in a Confederate prison until December 1864. In 1928, at age 81, he married 18-year-old Gertrude Grubb. She lived in the cabin until 2003, the last widow of a Union veteran in Tennessee. [S537]
The war’s politics carried a Grainger man to the governor’s office. DeWitt Clinton Senter, a Whig before the war, became a Republican elector in 1864 and 1868 and Speaker of the state Senate in 1866–67. [S522] When Governor William G. Brownlow went to the U.S. Senate in 1867, Senter finished his term. He then won the governorship in 1869 against William B. Stokes. [S522][S541] As governor he sided with conservatives and former Confederates, rolling back key Reconstruction measures. He backed the 1870 constitutional convention, which restored voting rights to former Confederates and returned the Democrats to power. [S522][S541] He retired to a farm near Morristown and died there in 1898. [S522]
His early life depends on the source. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says he was born in McMinn County on March 26, 1832, and went to school in Grainger. [S522] The state marker in Rutledge calls him "a native" of Grainger County and gives his life as 1830–1898. [S541] We give both.
By the late 1800s, mineral springs flowing out of Clinch Mountain had become a tourist draw. [S520] The best-known was Tate Springs, also written Tate Spring or Tate’s Spring, just east of Bean Station off U.S. 11W. [S551][S544]
Its early years are told two ways. The markers placed by Kingswood Home for Children, which owns the grounds today, say the three-story Victorian hotel was built in 1865 and could hold 600 guests. They say Thomas Tomlinson bought 2,500 acres and the resort from the Tate family in 1876 and made it a "world-class" resort. [S544] The 1973 National Register nomination, citing the 1930s WPA guide to Tennessee, says the first hotel was built by C. O. Tate, and Tomlinson bought the property soon after the Civil War and built another hotel. [S551] Another marker says Tomlinson had been a purchasing agent for the Confederate army and owned Tate Springs for thirty-three years before he died in 1909. His 1880 house still stands and was restored in 2016. [S546]
By 1880 Tate Springs was listed in a railroad guide to East Tennessee resorts. Its water was advertised as good for the stomach, liver and kidneys and for nerves frayed by "modern life." [S551] Guests took the train to Morristown and rode a hack the last ten miles. [S551] The nomination quotes an 1882 guide that mentions a resident physician and grounds with more than 800 trees, and it notes plans to bottle and ship the water. [S551] A marker says the water was shipped "all over the world." [S545] The markers along the Kingswood trail mark a swimming pool and bathhouse from the early 1900s, a road of bachelor cottages called "Rowdy Row," and a golf course designed by Donald Ross, where Bobby Jones was photographed teeing off. [S549][S550][S548][S547]
The sources also disagree on how the resort ended. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says it declined and closed after the Great Depression and a major fire. [S520] The Kingswood marker gives an order of events. The resort closed in 1941, a casualty of the Depression. In 1943 the Rev. A. E. Wachtel bought the hotel and 1,500 acres for $35,000, and Kingswood Home for Children lived in the old hotel, more than 150 children at a time, until the hotel burned in 1963. [S544] The marker series says the resort’s last structure was destroyed by fire in 1963. [S560] The 1973 nomination says only that the hotel burned "sometime in the sixties." [S551] Put together, the resort closed around the start of World War II, and the fire came two decades later, after the building had become a children’s home.
What survives is the spring house, the two-story octagonal "gazebo" with a pagoda-style roof built over the spring. It was listed on the National Register in 1973. [S551][S545][S520] The Kingswood marker dates it to 1888. [S545] The National Register nomination says the writers found no early drawings or photographs of it. [S551]
In the 1930s and 1940s the Tennessee Valley Authority put a lake on each side of Grainger County. [S520]
To the north, Norris Dam on the Clinch River was TVA’s first dam. It was begun in 1933, months after TVA was created, and finished in 1936. Its lake backs up 73 miles of the Clinch and 56 miles of the Powell. [S359] Norris Lake lies along the county’s north side. [S520]
To the south, Cherokee Dam on the Holston was built as a wartime power project. Work began August 1, 1940, and was finished on a crash schedule on December 5, 1941, two days before Pearl Harbor. [S555] TVA’s address for the dam is on Power House Road in Rutledge. [S555] The lake has nearly 400 miles of shoreline and about 28,780 acres of water, and the lake level rises and falls about 30 feet between summer and winter. [S555]
The new lake covered part of Bean Station’s history. The Civil War Trails marker says Cherokee Lake partly covered the battlefield in 1940 and that some earthworks remain. [S535] It says the tavern stood until 1940, when it was taken down ahead of the lake. A later fire destroyed the salvaged materials before the building could be put back together. [S535] Today the old crossroads is marked by the markers on 11W and an overlook pull-off on 25E. [S533][S534]
The Tennessee Encyclopedia says the lakes revived the county’s recreation business: fishing, camping, water sports and lakefront lots. [S520] TVA lists public access areas, parks, boat docks and resorts, a state park and a wildlife management area along Cherokee’s shore. [S555]
Grainger’s best-known product today is the tomato. The Tennessee Encyclopedia calls Grainger County tomatoes "a national trademark." [S520] The county’s UT Extension office says the county has more than 650 greenhouses and about 500 acres in tomatoes. [S557] The tomato’s history here includes a setback: the canneries of the 1910s closed after a blight. [S520]
The Grainger County Tomato Festival in Rutledge was organized in 1992 to promote the county’s tomatoes and other farm products, and it is held every July. [S558][S530] Its best-known event is the "Tomato Wars," where registered players throw ripe tomatoes at each other. [S524][S558]
The Tennessee Encyclopedia lists a long roster of Grainger natives and residents. [S520] It includes:
- James Ore, a pioneer Indian fighter and Knoxville merchant, among the first settlers. Allen’s history puts his home at "Oresville," about a mile east of Bean Station. [S520][S532] - Several members of the Cocke family who served in the state legislature and Congress: John, Sterling, William and William Michael Cocke. [S520] - The Lea family, connected to Sam Houston. Members of the family founded a Texas town, surveyed the Iowa territory and taught at the University of Tennessee. [S520][S539] - Governor DeWitt Clinton Senter and U.S. Senator Spencer Jarnagin (1843–47). [S520][S522] - John K. Shields, chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court and U.S. senator (1913–25), and his brother, Knoxville banker W. S. Shields, who provided the land for the University of Tennessee’s football stadium. [S520] - John Williams, U.S. minister to Turkey. Surgeon Dr. Herbert Acuff. Tennessee attorney general Roy H. Beeler. U.S. treasurer Theo Tate. Arizona governor Bob Taylor Jones. [S520]
CTAS lists 23,527 people in Grainger County in 2020, up from 22,657 in 2010. The Tennessee Encyclopedia gives 20,659 for 2000. [S525][S520] The county has three incorporated towns: Bean Station, Blaine and Rutledge. Rutledge has been the county seat since the first courthouse in 1801. [S525][S532] Current town population estimates are on the MTAS pages for each town. [S527][S528][S529]
The county is still rural. Farms, small businesses and the two lakes carry its economy, and many residents drive to jobs in neighboring towns. [S520] Its history is mostly on the ground: highway markers, an old jail, a spring house in a field and the line of Clinch Mountain. [S543][S551][S520]
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1785 | First settlement begins south of Clinch Mountain near the head of Flat Creek [S532] |
| c. 1788 | Emory Road built from Blaine’s Crossroads toward the Clinch River; Mouth-of-Richland Baptist Church founded [S538] |
| 1796 | Act creating Grainger County from Hawkins and Knox (Apr. 22); first court at Benjamin McCarty’s (June 13) [S532][S526] |
| c. 1796 | Lea house built at Richland near Blaine [S539] |
| 1797 | Act of Oct. 28 orders the town of Rutledge laid out, named for George Rutledge [S526] |
| 1801 | First courthouse finished at Rutledge; Anderson and Claiborne counties created partly from Grainger [S532][S38] |
| 1808 | Albert Miller Lea born at Richland [S539] |
| 1811–14 | Whiteside Inn (1811) and Bean Station Inn (1814) built, per the 1929 DAR marker [S533] |
| 1826–27 | Andrew Johnson runs a tailor shop in Rutledge for about six months [S556][S542] |
| 1834 | Stage line from Bean Station to Lexington, Ky., begins (after 1834) [S523] |
| 1848 | Grainger County jail built in Rutledge [S543] |
| 1850 | Union County created, partly from Grainger [S38] |
| 1861 | Grainger voters reject secession, 1,756 to 495 (June 8) [S530] |
| 1863 | Battle of Bean’s Station (Dec. 14); Federals entrench at Blaine’s Crossroads and Longstreet withdraws [S521][S553][S536] |
| 1865 | Tate Springs hotel built, per the Kingswood marker [S544] |
| 1869 | DeWitt Clinton Senter elected governor [S522] |
| 1870 | Hamblen County created, partly from Grainger [S38] |
| 1876 | Thomas Tomlinson buys Tate Springs, per the Kingswood marker [S544] |
| 1888 | Tate Springs spring house built, per the Kingswood marker [S545] |
| 1910s | Canneries close after a tomato blight [S520] |
| 1936 | Norris Dam finished on the Clinch [S359] |
| 1940–41 | Cherokee Dam built (Aug. 1, 1940–Dec. 5, 1941); Bean Station tavern dismantled [S555][S535] |
| 1941 | Tate Springs resort closes [S544] |
| 1943 | Kingswood Home for Children moves into the old Tate Springs hotel [S544] |
| 1963 | Tate Springs hotel burns [S544][S560] |
| 1973 | Tate Springs spring house listed on the National Register [S551][S545] |
| 1974 | County industrial park built [S520] |
| 1978 | Blaine incorporated (Nov. 1) [S529] |
| 1992 | Grainger County Tomato Festival organized [S558] |
| 1996–97 | Bean Station incorporated (MTAS: Jan. 1, 1996; Tennessee Encyclopedia: 1997) [S528][S520] |
| 2003 | Gertrude Janeway, Tennessee’s last Union widow, dies [S537] |
| 2020 | Census counts 23,527 people [S525] |
Start in Rutledge. The courthouse is on Rutledge Pike, and the county archives inside are the county’s research room for history and genealogy. Check the archives page for when they are open. [S531][S530] Around town, look for the 1848 jail, the state marker for Andrew Johnson’s first tailor shop and the marker for Governor DeWitt Senter. [S543][S542][S541] If you come in July, the Tomato Festival fills the town. Check the festival site for dates. [S558]
Visit: Grainger County Government · Grainger County Archives · Grainger County Tomato Festival [S530][S531][S558]
Then drive northeast to Bean Station. The 1929 DAR marker and the Civil War Trails battle marker stand together near U.S. 11W and Bean Station Cemetery Road, looking out over the battlefield and Cherokee Lake. [S533][S535] The 1991 Ruritan marker is at a scenic pull-off on southbound U.S. 25E. [S534] Town information is on the town’s own site. [S559]
Visit: Town of Bean Station [S559]
Just east of town, Tate Springs is on the grounds of the Kingswood Home for Children. The spring house is the landmark to look for. The resort markers line a Kingswood hiking trail. [S551][S544][S545] This is a working children’s home, so treat it as private property, follow posted rules, and ask Kingswood before walking the grounds. [S544]
Finish at the water. Cherokee Dam on the Holston, which TVA lists at a Rutledge address, is the place to start; TVA’s page has the lake’s facts. The reservoir’s shoreline has public access areas and parks. [S555] If you have time, head back toward Knoxville through Blaine. The Civil War Trails marker at the community center on Indian Ridge Road tells the Blaine’s Crossroads story, and the Emory Road marker is also in Blaine. [S536][S538]
Visit: TVA: Cherokee Reservoir [S555]
Every bracketed number on this page links here. Written by My East TN in our own words and checked against each source on 2026-10-31 (ET). Where sources disagree (for example, which counties were later carved from Grainger, whether Rutledge dates to 1797, 1798 or 1799, whether Bean Station incorporated in 1996 or 1997, which Bean founded Bean Station, when the big tavern was built, whether a major skirmish at Blaine came at Christmas 1862 or the Blaine’s Crossroads standoff was in December 1863, whether the fighting at Bean’s Station opened about 2 a.m. or 2 p.m., whether the Federals left in good order or in disorder, how many men were lost there, why Andrew Johnson left Rutledge, where and when DeWitt Senter was born, and how and when Tate Springs ended), we give both versions or leave the exact figure out. Several business-history details (the Holston Paper Mill, the Knoxville and Bristol Railway, the canneries and tomato blight, Clinchdale Lumber, knitting mills, zinc, Thorn Hill marble and the 1974 industrial park) come from a single source, the Tennessee Encyclopedia, and are marked that way. We don’t republish encyclopedia, museum or marker text — follow the links for the full articles.
Hero art: our Cherokee Lake illustration, reused from the site’s lake guide (an illustration of the lake Grainger shares with its neighbors, not a picture of a specific Grainger County landmark). Corrections: [email protected].