Johnson County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Mountain City
Year Organized: 1836
Square Miles: 298

Court House:

222 Main Street
County Courthouse
Mountain City, TN 37683-1338

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Thomas Johnson (ca. 1836), early settler of Carter County on the Doe River, prominent citizen and one of the first magistrates of Johnson County.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Johnson County

Created 1836 from Carter County; named in honor of Thomas Johnson (ca. 1836), early settler of Carter County on the Doe River, prominent citizen and one of the first magistrates of Johnson County.

Johnson County was formed in 1836 from Carter County. (Private Acts of Tennessee 1835-1836, Chapter 31).

Located in the extreme northeastern corner of the state, Johnson County lies on the western slope of the Appalachian Mountains. It is bounded by Virginia on the north and North Carolina on the south and east. Hilly and mountainous, the county covers approximately 290 square miles, and the highest elevation is Snake Mountain at 5,574 feet. The most fertile and flat land can be found along the Little Doe River and Roan and Beaverdam Creeks.

Before the arrival of white settlers, the Cherokees, Creeks, and Yuchis used the area as a hunting and burial ground. Evidence of prehistoric mound builders has been found. The first white settlers were mostly English, but also included some Scots-Irish and Germans. The first settlement occurred at the confluence of a buffalo trail and three wilderness trails. The settlement name, Trade, attests to its importance as a meeting place where settlers, frontiersmen, and Native Americans swapped goods and stories.

Daniel Boone hunted and explored the area between 1761 and 1769. Numerous settlers followed Boone's trail through the wilderness, including John Honeycutt, who built a cabin on Roan Creek. Honeycutt entertained several well-known frontiersmen, including Boone and James Robertson, who achieved fame in the Watauga and Cumberland settlements. Before the end of the century, additional settlements had been established at Little Doe, Shady Valley, and Laurel Bloomery.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 303 square miles (784 km²), of which, 298 square miles (773 km²) of it is land and 4 square miles (11 km²) of it (1.41%) is water. Johnson County's boundary with Sullivan County is defined as the ridgeline of Holston Mountain.

Neighboring Counties:

Washington County, Virginia (north)
Grayson County, Virginia (northeast)
Ashe County, North Carolina (east)
Watauga County, North Carolina (southeast)
Avery County, North Carolina (south)
Carter County (southwest)
Sullivan County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Mountain City (County Seat)

town

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."