Townsend, Tennessee Townsend, Tennessee Location of Townsend, Tennessee Location of Townsend, Tennessee Townsend is a town/city in Blount County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States.
The populace was 244 at the 2000 census and 448 at the 2010 census. For thousands of years a site of Native American occupation by varying cultures, Townsend is one of three "gateways" to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Identifying as "The Peaceful Side of the Smokies," Townsend has the least traffic of the three chief entrances to the nationwide park.
The park's other two entrances one just south of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the other just north of Cherokee, North Carolina are home to multiple commercial attractions that draw millions of tourists annually.
Native Americans were the first inhabitants of Tuckaleechee Cove on the Little River; the earliest archaeological finds in the cove date to 2000 B.C.
Historical marker in Townsend near the site of the Cherokee villages of Tuckaleechee The Cherokee appeared in the region around 1600, and assembled a series of small villages along Little River.
The name "Tuckaleechee" is from the Cherokee Tikwalitsi, and its initial meaning is unknown. A branch of the Great Indian Warpath forked at this site, with one branch heading west to the Overhill suburbs along the Little Tennessee River and another heading south to North Carolina. 19th-century anthropologist James Mooney recounted an attempted raid on the Cherokee villages in Tuckaleechee by the Shawano (Shawnee) in the mid-18th century.
70-ton Shay engine at the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company Museum Townsend of Pennsylvania purchased 86,000 acres (350 km2) of territory along the Little River, stretching from Tuckaleechee Cove all the way to Clingmans Dome.
The following year, Townsend received a charter for his new firm, the Little River Lumber Company.
The Little River Railroad was constructed shortly after that, connecting the sawmill with Walland to the west, and following the Little River upstream to Elkmont to the southeast. Townsend quickly profited from the forests of the Little River bottomlands.
Townsend's success led to a rapid expansion of logging operations throughout the Smokies. By the time the park was formed in the 1930s, nearly two-thirds of region forests had been cut down, and park supervisors have worked to restore the forests. Townsend initially opposed the accomplishment, but after some wavering, sold at base price 76,000 acres (310 km2) of his Little River Lumber tract in 1926 to what would eventually turn into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although some predicted that the loss of the lumber trade would doom Tuckaleechee, the explosion in tourism as a result of the park's beginning has contributed to the region economy, keeping it mostly healthy. Townsend is positioned in easterly Blount County at 35 40 32 N 83 45 18 W (35.675471, -83.755012). It is situated in Tuckaleechee Cove, one of a several "limestone windows" that dot the northern base of the Smokies.
Other limestone windows in the region include Cades Cove, Wear Cove, and Jones Cove.
Tuckaleechee Cove is situated between Bates Mountain to the north and Rich Mountain to the south, with the cove's greater populace estimated at around 1,500.
The Little River, its origin high in the mountain peaks on the north slopes of Clingmans Dome, slices east-to-west through Tuckaleechee and drains much of the cove.
The town/city of Townsend dominates the easterly half of Tuckaleechee.
According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the town/city has a total region of 2.2 square miles (5.6 km2), all land. As of 2004, annexation had considerably increased the size of the town to its current size.
321, also known as Lamar Alexander Parkway and Wears Valley Road, is the chief highway connecting Townsend with Walland (and eventually Maryville) to the northwest and Pigeon Forge (via Wears Valley) to the east-northeast, where it intersects U.S.
321 tees north and then curves northeast, while Tennessee 73 continues straight and then turns southeast and heads straight into the nationwide park.
Townsend is home to the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center, which preserves various aspects of the region's history, and the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company Museum, which recounts the area's logging history.
Next to the tradition center is the new National Park Service Collections Preservation Center, which archives items from all of the nationwide park units in the region (though not open to the public).
Just to the north and west of Townsend, the Foothills Parkway is a nationwide parkway that traverses Chilhowee Mountain and offers multiple scenic overlooks at high elevations, with views of the Smokies to the south and the Tennessee Valley and Cumberland Plateau to the north and west.
"Geographic Identifiers: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (G001): Townsend city, Tennessee".
Iva Butler, "Archaeologists Pack Up Townsend Dig," The Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times, 17 February 2001.
Tennessee Historical Commission marker IE 15 along US-321, Townsend, Tennessee.
Michael Frome, Strangers in High Places: The Story of the Great Smoky Mountains (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 165-166.
"History", Smoky Mountains Visitors Guide Carlos Campbell, Birth of a National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969), 33-35.
Harry Moore, A Roadside Guide to the Geology of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 33.
"Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2015".
"Incorporated Places and Minor Civil Divisions Datasets: Subcounty Resident Population Estimates: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012".
Little River Railroad and Lumber Company Museum - Site with exhibition knowledge and photographs from early 20th century Municipalities and communities of Blount County, Tennessee, United States
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Cities in Blount County, Tennessee - Cities in Tennessee - Communities of the Great Smoky Mountains - Knoxville urbane region - Townsend, Tennessee
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