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Fort Watauga

18th-century Cherokee historyAmerican Revolutionary War fortsBuildings and structures in Carter County, TennesseeElizabethton, TennesseeForts in Tennessee
North Carolina in the American RevolutionPre-statehood history of TennesseeTennessee in the American Revolution
Fort watauga tn1
Fort watauga tn1

Fort Watauga, also known as Fort Caswell, was a fortification located in the Watauga River's Sycamore Shoals near modern-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. It was constructed from 1775 to 1776 by the Watauga Association, a semi-autonomous government founded by American settlers living near the river, to defend the settlers against attacks from British-allied Indians. The fort was originally named Fort Caswell after the governor of North Carolina, Richard Caswell.In the 1970s, as part of the United States Bicentennial celebrations, the government of Tennessee authorized a reconstruction of Fort Watauga. A group of archaeologists conducted excavations in the Sycamore Shoals area and uncovered several trenches believed to have been part of the fort's walls. The fort was then rebuilt based on information gained about the fort's design from the excavation, descriptions of the fort in historical sources, and the general design of typical Appalachian frontier forts. The reconstructed fort is now part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Fort Watauga (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 36.34413 ° E -82.25421 °
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Fort Watauga

Patriot's Path
37694
Tennessee, United States
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Fort watauga tn1
Fort watauga tn1
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Sycamore Shoals
Sycamore Shoals

The Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, usually shortened to Sycamore Shoals, is a rocky stretch of river rapids along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Archeological excavations have found Native Americans lived near the shoals since prehistoric times, and Cherokees gathered there. As Europeans began settling the Trans-Appalachian frontier, the shoals proved strategic militarily, as well as shaped the economies of Tennessee and Kentucky. Today, the shoals are protected as a National Historic Landmark and are maintained as part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.Explorer James Robertson (later a founder of Nashville) identified the alluring flatlands at Sycamore Shoals, known as the Watauga Old Fields, in 1770, and led a group of colonists to the area shortly thereafter. In 1772, the Watauga settlers established the Watauga Association, one of the first constitutional governments west of the Appalachian Mountains and the "germ-cell" of what would later become the state of Tennessee.In 1775, Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone negotiated the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, in which Henderson's Transylvania Company purchased a large part of modern Kentucky and part of Tennessee from the Cherokee. The following year, the Watauga settlers successfully repelled one arm of a Cherokee group contesting land near Fort Watauga in a struggle that saw the creation of numerous stories surrounding figures such as Nancy Ward and John Sevier. In 1780, at the height of the American Revolutionary War, the frontier militia known as the Overmountain Men mustered at Sycamore Shoals as it prepared to march across the mountains en route to victory over British loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain.