Blount County, Tennessee

A short history

Created in 1795, before statehood, Blount County is named for William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory. Its seat, Maryville, was laid out in the act creating the county and named for the governor’s wife, Mary Grainger Blount. Before white settlement this was Cherokee country, with a village at Chilhowee; settlers built Houston’s Station in 1786. Maryville College began in 1819 as the Southern and Western Theological Seminary and was among the first southern schools to open its doors to Native Americans, African Americans and women.

Quakers from North Carolina founded Friendsville in 1796; during the Civil War, Friendsville Quakers helped more than two thousand Tennessee men escape Confederate conscription. Cades Cove was settled in the 1820s. In 1927 its residents went to court, unsuccessfully, to keep their homes out of the planned national park; many of the cove’s homes, barns and mills are preserved today. Sam Houston taught in a one-room schoolhouse near Maryville in 1812, now a state historic site.

Company towns shaped the county. The Little River Lumber Company, chartered in 1901, built a mill town in Tuckaleechee Cove and named it Townsend for company president W. B. Townsend. Walland was home to the Schlosser Leather Company. In 1914 the Aluminum Company of America reincorporated North Maryville as Alcoa and built Calderwood on the Little Tennessee. Much of eastern Blount County lies inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, formally established in 1935 and dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1940.

Towns & communities

• Maryville — county seat; Maryville College (1819)
• Alcoa — the 1914 aluminum company town
• Townsend — the 1901 lumber town in Tuckaleechee Cove — the “peaceful side of the Smokies”
• Walland — halfway to Townsend; the Foothills Parkway’s north end
• Friendsville — Quaker settlement of 1796
• Cades Cove — the preserved 1800s valley inside the park

Our place stories in and near Blount County

• Look Rock — Mission 66 tower on the Foothills Parkway
• Townsend — base camp for the quiet side
• Cades Cove — the Smokies’ favorite valley

Go deeper

• The Lost State of Franklin (1784–1789)
• Tanasi: the town that named Tennessee — and the TVA waters
• How the World Was Made — a Cherokee account

Neighboring counties: Sevier County · Knox County · Loudon County · All counties →

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