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Chilhowee (Cherokee town)

Archaeological sites in TennesseeCherokee towns in TennesseeCommunities of the Great Smoky MountainsGeography of Blount County, TennesseeGeography of Monroe County, Tennessee
Mississippian culture
Chilhowee timberlake detail1
Chilhowee timberlake detail1

Chilhowee (Cherokee: ᏧᎷᎾᎢ, romanized: Tsulunawe) was a prehistoric and historic Native American site in present-day Blount and Monroe counties in Tennessee, in what were the Southeastern Woodlands. Although now submerged by the Chilhowee Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River, the Chilhowee site was home to a substantial 18th-century Overhill Cherokee town. It may have been the site of the older Creek village "Chalahume" visited by Spanish explorer Juan Pardo in 1567. The Cherokee later pushed the Muscogee Creek out of this area. Although Chilhowee was destroyed by Euro-American frontiersmen who fought the Cherokee in the late 18th century, the village's name is still used for various entities throughout East Tennessee. Along with Chilhowee Dam and its reservoir, places and entities named after Chilhowee include a mountain, a geologic formation, several churches and schools, and a park and neighborhood in Knoxville.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Chilhowee (Cherokee town) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Chilhowee (Cherokee town)
Calderwood Highway,

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Latitude Longitude
N 35.55231 ° E -84.00737 °
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Calderwood Highway

Calderwood Highway
37878
Tennessee, United States
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Chilhowee timberlake detail1
Chilhowee timberlake detail1
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Tallassee (Cherokee town)
Tallassee (Cherokee town)

Tallassee (also "Talassee," "Talisi," "Tellassee," and various similar spellings) is a prehistoric and historic Native American site in present-day Blount and Monroe counties, Tennessee in the southeastern United States. Tallassee (Cherokee: ᏔᎵᏏ, romanized: Talisi) was the southernmost (and furthest upriver) of a string of Overhill Cherokee towns that existed along the lower Little Tennessee River on the west side of the Appalachian Mountains in the 18th century. Although Tallassee receives scant attention in primary historical accounts, it is one of the few Overhill towns to be shown on every major 18th-century map of the Little Tennessee Valley. Salvage excavations conducted in the 1950s prior to construction of a dam on the Little Tennessee River also revealed much earlier indigenous habitation here, dating to the Woodland period (1000 B.C.–1000 A.D.). The site was occupied throughout much of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture period (900–1600 A.D.). A prehistoric substructure platform mound was found, which was likely constructed about 1000 AD in this period. Evidence of the historic Cherokee included more than two dozen burials, with grave goods showing established European trading, as well as refuse pits and remnants of a burned house. The Tallassee site is now submerged by Chilhowee Lake, an impoundment of the Little Tennessee River created by the completion of Chilhowee Dam downriver in 1957. The shoreline above the site is occupied by the Calderwood Hydroelectric Development Area, which was established by the Aluminum Company of America in the 1920s. It was a base for the construction of Cheoah, Santeetlah, and Calderwood dams further upriver. The modern hamlet of Tallassee was not established until the early 20th century. It is located 7 miles (11 km) downstream, near Chilhowee Dam.

Chota (Cherokee town)
Chota (Cherokee town)

Chota (also spelled Chote, Echota, Itsati, and other similar variations) is a historic Overhill Cherokee town site in Monroe County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Developing after nearby Tanasi, Chota (Cherokee: ᎢᏣᏘ, romanized: Itsati) was the most important of the Overhill towns from the late 1740s until 1788. It replaced Tanasi as the de facto capital, or 'mother town' of the Cherokee people. A number of prominent Cherokee leaders were born or resided at Chota, among them Attakullakulla, Oconostota, Old Hop, Old Tassel, Hanging Maw, and Nancy Ward. The former Chota and Tanasi sites are listed together on the National Register of Historic Places; Tanasi also has an archaeological site designation (40MR62) assigned in 1972. Since 1979, both sites have been mostly submerged by the Tellico Lake impoundment of the Little Tennessee River. Archeological excavations were conducted before the dam was completed. During the excavations, the site of the Chota townhouse was found. Major Cherokee towns were centered around a large townhouse or council house, the site of community meetings of hundreds of people. These were usually built on top of an existing platform mound in the center of the town. These earthworks had typically been built by ancestral peoples of the South Appalachian Mississippian or earlier cultures. Prior to the flooding of Tellico Reservoir, the Chota townhouse site was raised above the reservoir's operating levels and connected via a causeway to the mainland. The Chota monument, situated directly above the ancient townhouse site, consists of eight pillars —one for each of the seven Cherokee clans, and one for the nation. The grave of Chief Oconostota, found in the 1969 excavations, was re-interred next to the monument. This site is now managed by the federally recognized Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, based in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Cheoah Dam
Cheoah Dam

The Cheoah Dam is a hydroelectric complex located in Graham and Swain counties, North Carolina, on the Little Tennessee River between river miles 51 and 52. The Cheoah Development consists of a dam and powerhouse, the first of several constructed by the Tallassee Power Company (now Tapoco), a subsidiary of Aluminum Company of America (now Alcoa), in order to generate electricity to smelt aluminum in Alcoa, Tennessee. The Cheoah project began in 1916 as a construction camp at the Narrows, where the Little Tennessee River flowed through a narrow gorge, and it was completed in 1919. Cheoah Dam created the long, narrow Cheoah Reservoir, which covers approximately 644 acres (261 ha) of the normal full pool area and a drainage area of 1,608 square miles (4,160 km2). The elevation of Cheoah Reservoir is 1,276.8 feet (389.2 m) (USGS). A scenic highway runs the length of the reservoir.The water inflow for Cheoah, like that of Calderwood and Chilhowee, is primarily dependent on releases from TVA's Fontana Dam, the primary flow control facility for the lower Little Tennessee River. Tapoco operated the Cheoah Development until 2012, when it was sold to Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners, forming Brookfield Smoky Mountain Hydropower.When completed in 1919, the 225-foot (69 m) dam was the world's highest overflow dam. The turbines were the largest in the world, and the 150,000-volt transmission line had the highest voltage and the longest span for a transmission line—5,010 feet (1,530 m) across the river below Cheoah Dam. The dam and associated structures were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.The dam was used as a filming location for the 1993 movie The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford.