Sycamore Shoals

The Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, usually shortened to Sycamore Shoals, is a rocky stretch of river rapids along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Archeological excavations have found Native Americans lived near the shoals since prehistoric times, and Cherokees gathered there. As Europeans began settling the Trans-Appalachian frontier, the shoals proved strategic militarily, as well as shaped the economies of Tennessee and Kentucky. Today, the shoals are protected as a National Historic Landmark and are maintained as part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.

Explorer James Robertson (later a founder of Nashville) identified the alluring flatlands at Sycamore Shoals, known as the Watauga Old Fields, in 1770, and led a group of colonists to the area shortly thereafter. In 1772, the Watauga settlers established the Watauga Association, one of the first constitutional governments west of the Appalachian Mountains and the "germ-cell" of what would later become the state of Tennessee.

In 1775, Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone negotiated the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, in which Henderson's Transylvania Company purchased a large part of modern Kentucky and part of Tennessee from the Cherokee. The following year, the Watauga settlers successfully repelled one arm of a Cherokee group contesting land near Fort Watauga in a struggle that saw the creation of numerous stories surrounding figures such as Nancy Ward and John Sevier. In 1780, at the height of the American Revolutionary War, the frontier militia known as the Overmountain Men mustered at Sycamore Shoals as it prepared to march across the mountains en route to victory over British loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

The Sycamore Shoals is located at just over 23 miles (37 km) upstream from the mouth of the Watauga River, and approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) downstream from the river's confluence with the Doe River and 11 miles (18 km) downstream from Wilbur Dam. While managed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the shoals are located within the municipal boundaries of Elizabethton. Beyond the shoals, the Watauga flows for another 8 miles (13 km) before entering its Boone Lake impoundment.

Excavations in the flats around Sycamore Shoals have uncovered evidence of significant habitation dating back to the Woodland period (ca. 1000 B.C. – 1000 A.D.) and continuing sporadically through much of the Mississippian period (ca. 900–1600 A.D.). In 1567, a contingent of the Juan Pardo expedition passed through the Nolichucky River valley to the south and attacked a fortified Chisca village (the village was probably located between modern Jonesborough and Erwin). By the late 17th century, the Mississippian-period inhabitants had largely vanished, and had been replaced by the Cherokee, who used Sycamore Shoals as a gathering place and hunting camp.

By the 1760s, long hunters such as Julius Dugger and Andrew Greer were operating stations in the Watauga Valley in the vicinity of Sycamore Shoals. In 1769, William Bean, known traditionally as Tennessee's first permanent white settler, built a cabin at the confluence of Boone's Creek and the Watauga, about 15 miles (24 km) downstream from the Shoals. Around the same time, John Honeycut was operating out of a hut at the mouth of Roan Creek (about 20 miles upstream from the Shoals, now part of Watauga Lake). Early hunters and explorers called the flats around Sycamore Shoals the Watauga "Old Fields," as they were full of cane rather than trees, resembling once-cultivated fields that had for years lain fallow.

In the Spring of 1770, James Robertson, possibly fleeing the turmoil created by the Regulator Movement in his home state of North Carolina, made an excursion into the Watauga Valley. He met John Honeycut, who pointed him to the Old Fields. Robertson later described the Old Fields as a "Promised Land" where fertile fields had already been cleared of the dense forest that dominated most lands in the region. Robertson planted crops and built a small cabin and corn crib on the north bank of the confluence to both the Watauga River and the Doe River and then returned to North Carolina to notify family and friends of his discovery. In late 1770 or early 1771, Robertson returned to the Old Fields with sixteen families in tow. Robertson's settlement, which became known as the Watauga Settlement, grew quickly.

The Watauga settlers believed (or claimed to have believed) that they were on lands that were part of the British domain, as the Watauga River is part of the watershed of the Holston River, the latter being established as the boundary between British and Cherokee lands by the 1770 Treaty of Lochaber. In 1771, however, a survey by John Donelson discovered that the Watauga settlements, along with the nearby Nolichucky settlement and an area east of Long Island of the Holston known as Carter's Valley, were on lands still claimed by the Cherokee. British Superintendent of Indian Affairs John Stuart thus ordered the Watauga settlers to vacate the valley and return to British territory.