A river crossing that decided who held the frontier
A rocky stretch of rapids on the Watauga River at Elizabethton. Excavation shows people living beside the shoals since prehistoric times, and the Cherokee gathered here. When Europeans pushed over into the Trans-Appalachian frontier the shoals turned strategic, because a place you can cross a river is a place armies and trade both have to come to, and what happened here shaped the early economies of Tennessee and Kentucky together.
Commons photos · US National Register · USGS place names · OpenStreetMap
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
