Adam Dale

Adam Dale came from Maryland, and the community he started grew into the town of Liberty, which had been laid off by 1807. Alexandria followed in 1820, founded by Daniel Alexander, another Maryland migrant. After the Civil War, Dowelltown grew up a mile east of Liberty and took its name from its postmaster, Frank Dowell. DeKalb's early towns were therefore started by single settlers and named for the families who came first, and each shaped how neighbors, mills and roads were later laid out around it.

What the plaque says

Adam Dale The first settler (1797) in what later became DeKalb County, Dale built a water-powered log mill to grind corn for the settlers who followed him here in 1800. Traces of the dam remain on Smith's fork, about 200 yards upstream.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Burgess Falls State Park — 21 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Rock Island State Park — 23 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 28 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 28 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Snow Hill — 2.1 mi
• Morgan's Ohio Raid June 11, 1863 — 5.1 mi
• DeKalb County Fair — 6.0 mi
• Wheeler School — 6.3 mi