Bledsoe County, Tennessee

Bledsoe County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Pikeville
Year Organized: 1807
Square Miles: 406

Court House:

P. O. Box 149
County Courthouse
Pikeville, TN 37367-0149

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Anthony Bledsoe (1733-1788), colonial and Revolutionary War soldier, surveyor, Tennessee militia colonel and early settler of Sumner County who was killed by Indians.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Bledsoe County

Created 1807 from Roane County and Indian lands; named in honor of Anthony Bledsoe (1733-1788), colonial and Revolutionary War soldier, surveyor, Tennessee militia colonel and early settler of Sumner County who was killed by Indians.

Bledsoe County was formed in 1807 from parts of Roane County and Indian lands. (Acts of Tennessee 1807, Chapter 9).

The oldest and northernmost county in the Sequatchie Valley is Bledsoe County; it became Tennessee's thirty-third county by an act of the Tennessee legislature in November 1807. It was named for Anthony Bledsoe, a Revolutionary War patriot who migrated to Tennessee from Virginia in the late 1700s.

Nature divided Bledsoe County's 404 square miles into three distinct regions: Sequatchie Valley, Cumberland Plateau, and Walden Ridge. In 1795 John McClellen and Charles McClung explored the area of the Sequatchie Valley that would become Bledsoe County. They praised the rich soil as equivalent to any land in the world, but settlers generally avoided the area until after the Third Tellico Treaty of 1805. Several early settlers accepted Sequatchie land as payment for service in the Revolutionary War.

Find more from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: BLEDSOE COUNTY

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 407 square miles (1,053 km²), of which, 406 square miles (1,052 km²) of it is land and 0 square miles (1 km²) of it (0.10%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Cumberland County (north)
Rhea County (east)
Hamilton County (southeast)
Sequatchie County (southwest)
Van Buren County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Pikeville (County Seat)

city

Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."