Tennessee Backroads:  Charleston & Calhoun

 

Charleston

Charleston doesn't offer a lot for a tourist to see today, but it was a very important destination for Cherokee and US leaders in 1838.  It's worth a visit to remember the past.

Charleston was the site of Fort Cass and the Cherokee Agency (see article on Joseph McMinn).  This was the headquarters for federal troops rounding up Cherokees in 1838, for the removal west, known as the Trail of Tears. 

Cherokee "Removal" 1838

Internment Camp site

In the hot, drought-stricken summer of 1838 the valleys between Charleston and Cleveland, centered on Rattlesnake Springs, become a large internment camp.  When the first shipments of people west by river were disastrous in the drought, the US government allowed the Cherokees to wait for fall's better weather.  However, they were not allowed to return home.  

Thousands of people camped here through the summer, suffering inadequate food, heat, whooping cough, dysentery, and other diseases.  The first detachment from Rattlesnake springs left September 1, 1838.  The last left December 5^th, and arrived in the west March 18, 1839.

No one knows how many Cherokees died awaiting removal in these camps.  Estimates of the number of Cherokee sent west range from 10,000 to 16,000. 

Today the valley along Dry Valley Road, NE, between Cleveland and Charleston, where the camps were, is comprised of privately-owned farms and homes.  Nothing is left today of Fort Cass or the internment camps except unmarked graves.

 

Calhoun

 

Don't be alarmed at the smell, and be careful if there's fog when you cross the beautiful Hiwassee River.  A Bowater paper plant just upstream fouls the air, and occasionally produces thick fog along I-75.  In 1990 a heavy fog fell and 99 vehicles on I-75 crashed, leading to 12 deaths and 42 injuries.

Hotels

Many of the major chain hotels are available a few miles north at the I-75 exits for Athens.  These tend to cater to business travelers, so you won't find a lot of price deals.

Cherokee History

Calhoun was founded by John Walker, Jr., a part-Cherokee grandson of Nancy Ward.  Walker operated a ferry on the Hiwassee River, and, later helped negotiate Calhoun Treaty, which gave the Cherokee land between the Hiwassee and Little Tennessee rivers to the state of Tennessee.  As an advocate of Cherokee removal to the west, John Walker was assassinated/murdered by two anti-removal Cherokees in 1834.