Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area

The visitors' center at Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area houses:

• interpretive displays about the area's history during the American Revolution
• a theater offering free screenings of a short documentary film of the American Revolutionary War history pertaining to Sycamore Shoals and the Overmountain Men, as narrated by John Cullum
• park offices
• bookstore and gift shop.

A reconstruction of the 18th-century Fort Watauga is located behind the visitors center. The fort, originally called Fort Caswell, was originally built in the mid-1770s. The reconstructed fort's design is based on archaeological finds, scant historic descriptions of the fort, and the typical design of forts on the Appalachian frontier.

A 450-seat amphitheater at Sycamore Shoals is located immediately adjacent to the reconstructed fort. The amphitheater is the site of the Official Outdoor Drama of the State of Tennessee, Liberty: The Saga of Sycamore Shoals (formerly billed as The Wataugans).

Mountain River trailhead

The 2-mile-loop (3 km), graveled Mountain River Trail follows the partially wooded south bank of the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River. Interpretive signs along the trail explain the various historical events that occurred at Sycamore Shoals.

There are three handicapped accessible picnic shelters that can be reserved at Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area. A picnic area with grills is also located beside the Visitor's Center.

The Sycamore Shoals State Historical Area is a recipient of a NASA sycamore "Moon tree" that was grown from one of hundreds of tree seeds that were launched into space on board the Apollo 14 mission (Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell on January 31, 1971, as part of a joint project between NASA and the U.S. Forest Service. These Moon tree seeds were packed in small containers and carried within astronaut Stuart Roosa's personal kit that orbited above the Moon with Roosa in the Apollo 14 Command/Service Module Kitty Hawk".

After returning to Earth, the hundreds of Apollo 14 Moon tree seeds were germinated by the Forest Service, and later during April 1976, a single young sycamore tree was delivered to and planted at the Sycamore Shoals State Historical Area was part of the celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolutionary War.[5][6]

Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area

The flatlands around Sycamore Shoals have been sporadically inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years, and were probably cultivated during the Mississippian period (ca. 1000–1600 C.E.). When the first European explorers arrived in the area in the early 18th century, the Cherokee were using the flats as a gathering place for hunting expeditions. In the 1760s, long hunters and traders established stations and hunting camps in the Watauga Valley in the vicinity of Sycamore Shoals. These early explorers called the flats the Watauga "Old Fields" due to their resemblance to once-cultivated lands that had been left fallow.[3]

In 1770, James Robertson (a later founder of Nashville) made an excursion into the Watauga Valley, possibly to locate settlement sites for families fleeing the turmoil of the Regulator Movement in his native North Carolina. A trader pointed Robertson to the Old Fields, which Robertson later described as a "Promised Land" and planted a corn crop and built a cabin and corn crib. Robertson then departed for North Carolina, but returned to the Old Fields, a few months later, with several families to establish what became known as the Watauga settlement.[7]

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Watauga Petition

After surveyors placed the Watauga settlement and the other "south-of-Holston" settlements officially within the domain of the Cherokee tribe in 1771, Robertson negotiated a 10-year lease for the Watauga lands. Being outside the authority of any of the British colonies, the Watauga settlers established a regional constitutional government known as the "Watauga Association." Tragedy struck as the lease was being celebrated, when a Cherokee warrior was murdered by a white man. Robertson's skillful diplomacy made peace with the irate Cherokee, who threatened to expel the settlers by force if necessary.[8]

Interpretive sign at the park recalling the muster of the Overmountain Men

In March 1775, the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, sometimes called the Transylvania Purchase, was signed by Richard Henderson and Cherokee leaders Attakullakulla and Oconastota. The treaty involved the purchase of some 20,000,000 acres (81,000 km²) of land between the Kentucky River and the Cumberland River, which included a large part of what is now Kentucky and part of Tennessee. Henderson's purchase was in violation of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, however, which prohibited private purchase of American Indian land, and the Virginia and North Carolina assemblies refused to recognize it. The purchase, nevertheless, led to the blazing of the Wilderness Road by Daniel Boone.[4]

In the weeks following the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, a faction of Cherokee opposed to the sale, led by Dragging Canoe, aligned themselves with the British with plans to drive the settlers back across the Appalachian Mountains. The Watauga and Nolichucky settlers organized themselves into the Washington District and formed a Committee of Safety, which acquired arms and built forts, including Fort Watauga. In July 1776, the Cherokee invaded the south-of-Holston settlements. On July 21, 1776, a Cherokee invasion force attacked Fort Watauga, but was thwarted by the fort's garrison,[9] which was led by John Carter, James Robertson, and John Sevier.[8]

On September 25, 1780, Sycamore Shoals served as the staging area for the Overmountain Men, the frontier militia that crossed the mountains to engage and defeat an army of British loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina. Overmountain Men had previously fought at the Siege of Charleston (these included what one historian dubbed the first "Tennessee volunteers")[10] and the Battle of Musgrove Mill, both in 1780, and participated in two campaigns against the Cherokee, in 1776 and 1780.[11] William Tatham, Watauga Association clerk and drafter of the Watauga Petition, was present at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.[12]