Blount County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Maryville
Year Organized: 1795
Square Miles: 559

Court House:

341 Court Street
County Courthouse
Maryville, TN 37804-5906

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of William Blount (1749-1800), member of the Continental Congress, governor of the Territory South of the River Ohio (later Tennessee), founder of Knoxville, US senator, speaker of the state senate.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Blount County

Created 1795 from Knox County; named in honor of William Blount (1749-1800), member of the Continental Congress, governor of the Territory South of the River Ohio (later Tennessee), founder of Knoxville, US senator, speaker of the state senate.

Blount County was formed in 1795 from Knox County
(Acts of Territory South of the Ohio River 1795, Chapter 6).

There were fires at the Blount County courthouse in 1879 & 1934.

Blount County is one of the oldest counties in Tennessee. Established in 1795 before statehood, it was named in honor of Territorial Governor William Blount. Prior to white settlement the area was home to the Cherokee Indians, who established their capital at Chota and occupied a village at Chilhowee.

White settlers arrived in the mid-1780s and established a permanent settlement at Houston's Station in 1786. The county seat of Maryville, named after Governor Blount's wife, Mary Grainger Blount, was established and laid out in the 1795 act creating Blount County. Throughout the nineteenth century, Maryville was a medium-sized prosperous county seat, noted as the home of Maryville College. Originally established in 1819 as the Southern and Western Theological Seminary, Maryville College was among the first southern schools to open its doors to Native Americans, African Americans, and women. As industry arrived in the county at the turn of the century, Maryville boomed as a rail junction. Important properties associated with the boom include the Blount County Courthouse (1906), a Classical Revival design by Bauman and Bauman of Knoxville; the Southern Railway freight depot; and the Indiana Avenue historic district.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 567 square miles (1,468 km²), of which, 559 square miles (1,447 km²) is land and 8 square miles (21 km²) (1.43%) is water.

The foothills of the Appalachian Mountains determine much of Blount County's landscape, with a segment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park extending into southeastern Blount County. In addition to the dominant mountains, the Little Tennessee River flows through the county and forms several man-made lakes created by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Neighboring Counties:

Knox County, Tennessee - north
Sevier County, Tennessee - east
Swain County, North Carolina - south
Graham County, North Carolina - southwest
Monroe County, Tennessee - southwest
Loudon County, Tennessee - west

Cities and Towns:

- Alcoa	city	Incorporated Area
- Friendsville	city	Incorporated Area
- Louisville	city	Incorporated Area
- Maryville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Rockford	city	Incorporated Area
- Townsend	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."