Newport, Tennessee Newport, Tennessee Newport, Tennessee Newport, Tennessee Location of Newport, Tennessee Location of Newport, Tennessee Newport is a town/city in and the governmental center of county of Cocke County, Tennessee, United States. The populace was 6,945 at the 2010 census, down from 7,242 at the 2000 census.
The Great Indian Warpath passed through what is now Newport en route to the ancient Cherokee hunting grounds of northeastern Tennessee. The Warpath crossed the Pigeon River at a point approximately 0.2 miles (0.3 km) east of the Mc - Sween Memorial Bridge (US-321), in an region where the river is normally low enough to walk across. The first European traders to the area, arriving in the mid-18th century, called this point along the Pigeon River the "War Ford".
At the close of the Revolution, the first Euro-American pioneer appeared in the Newport area, ensconcing themselves in the vicinity of the strategic river fords.
Shortly after that, Emanuel Sandusky, a Polish immigrant, established a farm on the territory where the Cocke County Memorial Building now stands, and Samuel O'Dell settled at the junction of the Pigeon River and Cosby Creek.
Sometime in the 1790s, the Gilliland family donated 50 acres (200,000 m2) of territory for a town square and courthouse to be situated opposite Fine's Ferry on the banks of the French Broad, and the town of New Port was born. For nearly a quarter-century, the inhabitants of the Newport region lived under constant threat of attack from Cherokee crossing the mountain peaks from North Carolina.
By 1800, Cherokee attacks in the Newport region had been drastically reduced.
The French Broad River in the vicinity of Fine's Ferry at Newport's northern border The French Broad River passes 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the current town/city limits.
As the French Broad empties into the Tennessee River, suburbs along its banks are connected via waterway to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
In the early 19th century, William Faubion, who lived just northeast of New Port, managed to reach New Orleans with a flatboat shipment and return safely. In early 19th-century East Tennessee, which was riddled with poor roads and hilly terrain, river travel was a mostly convenient mode of transportation.
We rode through New-Port, the capital of Cocke County, forded French Broad at Shine's Ferry, and came cold and without food for man or beast to John O'Haver's but oh, the kindness of our open-hearted friends. I set out for Newport, a small town on the French Broad River.
One was a grandmother whose grandson drowned while she fled athwart the Pigeon River in an attempt to keep him from being sold. The other, a slave by the name of "Tom", was tortured and burned alive for the murder of Mary Lotspeich. In the years dominant up to the war, Newport's Methodists split into pro-slavery and anti-slavery denominations, reflecting a division common throughout the county. The owners of Beechwood Hall buried their silver and kept their horses in the basement to prevent them from being stolen. The inhabitants of Cocke County eventually recruited a home guard to protect them from raids, which they based at the mouth of Indian Camp Creek, a several miles south of New Port. In 1867, the Cincinnati, Cumberland Gap, and Charleston Railroad constructed a line through Clifton, which was positioned just south of New Port on the other side of the Pigeon River.
As barns s were quickly replacing flatboats as the preferred mode of transit and shipping in East Tennessee, the inhabitants of New Port sought to build the new Cocke County Courthouse in Clifton.
To bypass state law, which required an election to move a county seat, New Port decided to simply annex Clifton. Thus the town of Newport "shifted" from its locale on the flatboat-friendly French Broad to its current locale along the barns running alongside to the Pigeon.
The Pigeon River in Newport In 1880, Canadian-born entrepreneur Alexander Arthur (1846 1912), representing the Scottish Carolina Timber and Land Company, appeared in Newport with ambitious plans to log the Pigeon valley.
The inhabitants of Newport who were nonplussed by the flashy and energetic Arthur warned the entrepreneur about the Pigeon River's volatility.
By the 1890s, the populace of Newport had grown to 900. While Alexander Arthur's logging venture failed, trade continued to find its way to the town.
Lawrence Leather Company established what eventually turn into one of the world's biggest tanneries in Newport. Three years later, brothers James and John Stokely established the Stokely Brothers Company (now Stokely-Van Camp's) to can vegetables they interval throughout the French Broad valley. Newport native Ben Hooper served as governor of Tennessee from 1911 to 1915.
Carson Springs, 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Newport, advanced around William Wilson's tavern and stagecoach terminal in the early 19th century.
The establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 brought a still greater influx of tourists to Newport, but nothing like the tourism explosion that occurred in neighboring Sevier County.
Kiffin Yates Rockwell, who was born in Newport in 1892, joined the French Foreign Legion amid World War I.
These early distillers found an easy market in the taverns and saloons of Newport, itself positioned at a point where the Appalachian highlands meet the Tennessee Valley.
And as young men left the farms of non-urban Tennessee to seek employment in the textile mills of Knoxville and the large manufacturing hubs of the Midwest in the early 20th century, networks for moving the liquor from the mountain hollows to the large urban areas were already in place. Ramsey, Cocke County Sheriff Tom O'Dell, and a several state troopers stationed in inside the county on charges of extortion and bribery.
In the 1990s, a series of economic initiatives by Newport and Cocke County, however, helped to curb the crime rate substantially. In 2009, the FBI indicted and successfully prosecuted a 23-person car theft and drug ring. Six persons entered guilty pleas by 2010, including a retired Newport police captain and his family. Eddie Hawk was sentenced to nine years. The investigation was branched from the FBI Rose Thorn case, which concentrated upon Cocke County Sheriff officers' corruption, resulting in an earlier 170 arrests on federal and state charges.
Newport is positioned in Cocke County at 35 57 48 N 83 11 48 W(35.963318, -83.196542). The town is situated along the Pigeon River in an region where the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains descend into the French Broad drainage basins.
The confluence of the French Broad, Nolichucky, and Pigeon rivers occurs 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Newport in an region once known as Forks-of-the-River.
This region now comprises the northeastern section of Douglas Lake, which was created by an impoundment of the French Broad by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1940s.
The French Broad eventually merges with the Holston River in Knoxville to form the Tennessee River, some 40 miles (64 km) to the west of Newport.
Route 70 in Carson Springs, and the consolidated road enters Newport from the west, intersecting US-321 in downtown Newport.
US-70 continues east to Del Rio, Tennessee, and Hot Springs, North Carolina, while US-321 turns north and crosses the Pigeon and French Broad en route to Greeneville and northeastern Tennessee.
North of the chief section is "Oldtown", situated between the Pigeon and French Broad, which was the town's chief area before the advent of the barns in the late 19th century.
Schools positioned in Newport: The City of Newport manages Newport Grammar School.
Cocke County Schools manages Cocke County High School, Northwest Elementary School, and Edgemont Elementary School.
"Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Enumeration Summary File 1 (G001): Newport city, Tennessee".
Carolyn Sakowski, Touring the East Tennessee Backroads (Winston-Salem: J.F.
Tennessee Historical Commission marker at the north end of Mc - Sween Memorial Bridge along US-321 in Newport, Tennessee.
Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee (Johnson City: Tennessee Overmountain Press, 1999), 279.
Evelyn Parrott Graham, Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), 35.
Carolyn Sakowski, Touring the East Tennessee Backroads (Winston-Salem: J.F.
Evelyn Parrott Graham, Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), 35-36.
Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 17.
Evelyn Parrott Graham, Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), 47.
Evelyn Parrott Graham, Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), 36, 40-45.
Evelyn Parrott Graham, Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), 41.
Evelyn Parrott Graham, Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), 36.
Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 114.
Carolyn Sakowski, Touring the East Tennessee Backroads (Winston-Salem: J.F.
Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 167-174.
Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 174.
Carolyn Sakowski, Touring the East Tennessee Backroads (Winston-Salem: J.F.
Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 175.
Rolfe Godshalk (editor), Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), Appendix I-II.
Wilma Dykeman, The French Broad (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 208.
Carolyn Sakowski, Touring the East Tennessee Backroads (Winston-Salem: J.F.
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration, Tennessee: A Guide to the State (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986).
Rolfe Godshalk (editor), "Moonshining," Newport (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970).
"FBI Cocke County Men Indicted for Racketeering".
Newport, Tennessee at DMOZ Municipalities and communities of Cocke County, Tennessee, United States
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