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Official Website
History
Grainger County was formed from Knox and Hawkins Counties in 1796, the year Tennessee became the sixteenth state of the United States. It is named for Mary Grainger Blount, wife of William Blount.
During the American Civil War, a state of near-guerrilla warfare brought economic, political, and social chaos to Grainger County. Two arguments occurred within the county during the Civil War, with the first as a skirmish in Blaine around Christmas of 1862. In the year ahead, the Battle of Bean's Station pitted the forces of Confederate General James Longstreet against a Union army under General J.M. Shackleford in a planned surprise attack that failed for Confederate forces through the critically poor decision-making of Longstreet's staff.
In the post-Civil War era, a businessman named Samuel Tate constructed a large Victorian-style luxury hotel just west of Bean Station that became the main focus of a resort known as Tate Springs. Around the late 1870s, the hotel was purchased by Captain Thomas Tomlinson, who would transform the property into a vast resort that advertised the supposed healing powers of its mineral spring’s water. During its heyday, the resort complex included over three-dozen buildings, a 100-acre park, and an 18-hole golf course. The resort had attracted some of the wealthiest people in America during this time. The resort declined during the Great Depression, and the hotel and most of its outbuildings have since been demolished after a major fire damaged the main hotel structure.
After the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s, many Grainger County residents had to be relocated for the construction of both Cherokee and Norris Dam in the southern and northern parts of the county. Bean Station experienced most of this loss, as a large original portion of the city now resides in the Cherokee Lake basin.
On May 13, 1972, 14 people were killed in a head-on collision between a Greyhound double-decker bus and a tractor-trailer hauling carpet on U.S. Route 11W in the Bean Station area of the county, making it the deadliest automobile accident of its time in Tennessee. This infamous crash, along with several other fatal crashes along the narrow two-lane stretch of U.S. Route 11W in Grainger County, gave it the nickname "Bloody Highway 11W."
Indian Cave is a historic site located on the Holston River near present-day Blaine. In the 1700s, a Cherokee village was located just west of the main cave entrance, before the people were pushed out by encroaching Anglo-American settlers. The Donelson Party passed the Indian Cave entrance on their way down the Holston River in 1779 to settle present-day Nashville, Tennessee. In the years after the American Revolutionary War, the number of settlers continued to increase. Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Congress authorized the president to remove the Indians from the Southeast to territory west of the Mississippi River.
Robert Hoke, a former Confederate general from North Carolina, purchased the cave on July 21, 1869 as one of his business enterprises after the American Civil War. He had it mined for bat guano, a valuable natural fertilizer.
Area businessmen formed the Indian Cave Park Association on January 4, 1916 to develop the cave as a commercial attraction, as was being done for other caves throughout the Great Smoky Mountains. The Association did not open the cave officially to the public until May 30, 1924.
On November 18, 2000, over 800 people from all over the United States attended an all-night dance party known as the "Rave in a Cave" in Indian Cave. The party lured many of its attendees via Internet advertisements. 22 arrests on drug charges were made and one party-goer died of a drug overdose. On the day of the party, nearby residents attempted to block access into the cave, leading to physical action by the attendees with baseball bats. Officials from the Grainger County sheriff's department had set up a road block to prevent further confrontations between county residents and the party attendees. Over 150 traffic citations were also filed as well. The cave is no longer open to visitors and has been closed to the public since 2005.
On July 4, 2012, Grainger County received national attention when 10-year-old Noah Winstead and his friend, 11-year old Nate Lynam, were electrocuted due to frayed wiring being in contact with the water the boys were swimming near a Cherokee Lake marina near Bean Station. In the aftermath of the tragedy, State legislators passed the Noah and Nate Act, which required marinas to be routinely inspected safety hazards such as faulty wiring and dangerous equipment operations.
In July 2015, Grainger County received international attention and social media backlash after a hardware store owner in Washburn placed a ‘No gays allowed’ sign on the door of his business after the ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges by the Supreme Court of the United States.
On April 5, 2018, Southeastern Provisions, a cattle slaughterhouse in the county, was raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); 11 workers were arrested and 86 more were detained, all of whom were suspected of residing in the United States unlawfully. At the time, the raid was reportedly the largest workplace raid in United States history. In September 2018, the owner of the meatpacking facility was found guilty of multiple state and federal crimes, including tax evasion, wire fraud, contamination of local water supply, employing undocumented immigrants not authorized to work in the US, and other numerous workplace violations.
Adjacent Counties
- Claiborne County
- Hancock County
- Union County
- Hawkins County
- Hamblen County
- Jefferson County
- Knox County
Cities, Towns & Communities
- Avondale
- Bean Station (part)
- Beech Grove
- Blaine
- Bowen
- Cherokee
- Elm Springs
- Joppa
- Liberty Hill
- Mary Chapel
- Mooresburg (part)
- New Corinth
- Powder Springs
- Rutledge (County Seat)
- Tater Valley
- Thorn Hill
- Washburn
Links
National Register of Historic Places
Grainger County Genealogy & History
