Jackson County, Tennessee
Historical Sites

Fort Blount

One of the most important historical sights in Jackson County is that of Fort Blount which is located on the Cumberland River two miles northwest of the village of Flynn's Lick.

In 1787, a road called the Avery Trace was cut through the Wilderness from North Carolina via Flynn's Creek Crossing of the Cumberland River and on the French Lick (Nashville). Because of the threat of attack from the Cherokee Indians to the settlers using the Avery Trace, Governor William Blount ordered a fort to be built at the Cumberland crossing, and in about 1791 construction was begun. Originally known as "Big Lick Garrison" or the "Block House on the Cumberland," the military fort was officially named for Governor Blount and was manned by a militia of between fifteen and thirty men. The Fort was situated approximately fifty yards from the mouth of a creek. It consisted of four block houses, one at each corner of a square of near one and one/half acres. There was a picket of timber set inbetween the houses, and the gate faced the creek. Water supplied by a spring on the grounds. Although Fort Blount was not maintained as a military fort after 1796, settlers traveling on the Avery Trace made welcome use of it as a stopover and refuge on their journey westward.

Nothing remains now of Fort Blount; however the Fort Blount Chapter of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities has recently been organized with the express purpose of restoring/rebuilding this historic site.

The Flynn Creek Crater

The Flynn Creek area is located in North Central Tennessee in the extreme northeastern part of the Nashville Basin in Jackson County

The Flynn Creek Crater was formed sometime near the middle of the Devonian Period, about 360 million years ago. The Crater belongs to a controversial class of structures that number at least 50 throughout the world and have been variously termed Cryptovolcanic, Cryptoexplosion, or Meteroite impact craters.

The possibility that these unusual structures were produced by the same general types of cratering mechanisms that have operated on other planetary surfaces has stimulated re-examination of a number of the terrestrial structures, including a detailed field and laboratory study of the Flynn Creek Crater. Field work has included detailed geological mapping, a gravity and magnetic study, and a core drilling inside the crater. These studies indicate that the Flynn Creek Crater has the same structural features that are found in the larger meteorite impact craters and in the larger man-made craters formed by surface and near-surface nuclear and chemical explosions. The results of the field and laboratory studies and the structural comparisons indicate that the formation of the Flynn Creek Crater is consistent with a comet's impact. The outline of the crater is generally circular and can be distinguished from the air.