Extracted from Guide to Genealogical and Historical Research in Jefferson County, Tennessee, copyright © 1995 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. All rights reserved.
Jefferson County Roads Today
In 1834, Jefferson County was served by three stage coach routes. Later in the 19th Century, railroads and riverboats also provided transportation of goods and people. Prior to public transportation, pioneers on foot and horseback followed established paths into East Tennessee. Thomas Preston wrote of one path in 1926:
"From 1740 until the Revolutionary War this migration continued [from near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, Virginia], many of the hardy frontiersmen pushing on down the Holston Valley into the Cumberland settlements of Tennessee and through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. A well-defined buffalo trail extended from Harper's Ferry down the Shenandoah Valley to Big Lick [Roanoke], Va., thence westward to the headwaters of the Holston River, thence following the Holston Valley to Long Island [Kingsport]."
As early as 1760, Col. William Byrd cut out a road following the old buffalo trail from Big Lick, Va., to Long Island. ... Practically all of the early settlers of southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky passed over this route in search of their new homes. The Lee Highway [U.S. Highway 11] ... follows this old route for more than two hundred miles."
[Thomas Preston, "Sketch Sixteen - Frontier Roads," Historical Sketches of the Holston Valley (Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1926), pp. 181-182.]
Jefferson County Roads circa 1870
Inside Jefferson County, most of the major roads shown on modern maps existed by the time of the Civil War. An 1869 map of Tennessee shows the following major routes in Jefferson County:
- Dandridge to Mecklenburg (in East Knox County) via Wilson's Gap
- Dandridge to Henry's Crossroads, with a fork to Sevierville
- Dandridge to Mossy Creek (with fork to New Market)
- Dandridge to Whitesburg via Springvale
- Dandridge to Greeneville
- Dandridge to "South of the French Broad River" -- 3 different roads
- New Market to Mossy Creek
- Mossy Creek to Whitesburg
- Mossy Creek to Blaine via Nance's Ferry
- Mossy Creek to Newport via Leadvale
- Talbott to Horshoe Bend (where Panther Creek meets the Holston River)
- The road from Sevierville to Newport passed through, north of English Mountain
[Colton's Map of the State of Tennessee (New York: G. W. & C. B. Colton, 1869).]
Secondary roads went from New Market and Mossy Creek to Oar's Ferry, which provided access to Grainger County.
Tennessee Roads circa 1800
