Butler's Landing / Bailey Butler

Butler's Landing nearly became the county seat. Clay County was created in 1870 from isolated northern sections of Overton and Jackson, and its first court met at Butler's Landing, in a store beside the river. The landing served as a storage depot with large warehouses run by the Butler family, but Celina won the county-seat vote by a narrow margin. Celina then became a stop on the steamboat and rafting trade that carried lumber, chickens and mail until highways and automobiles ended it in the 1920s and 1930s.

What the plaque says

Butler's Landing / Bailey Butler Butler's Landing: Daniel Boone, on his trip to the Western Territory in 1773, followed the old game and Indian trail to where two creeks flowed into the Cumberland River. He referred to them as the Twin or Double Creeks in his journal. On this trip, he spent the winter on the bluff (now known as the "Seven Sisters") down the river below what is now Butler's Landing at the mouth of the Twin Creeks-Mill Creek and Dry Fork Creek. Congress, in 1820, established the fourth post road at Butler's Landing. Bailey Butler 1779-1842: -During the War of 1812, Bailey Butler, an early 19th century pioneer of Clay (then Jackson) County and a Captain of the West Tennessee Volunteer Militia, fought in the Battle of Talladega under Commander Andrew Jackson. Butler was named first postmaster of what became known as Butler's Landing in 1831. The first county court met nearby in 1871 on land first owned and operated by Bailey Butler and his family. The Butlers built their houses, a large log store, and operated a river ferry and landing site on the Cumberland River at is juncture with Mill Creek and Dry fork Creek.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Standing Stone State Park — 8.2 mi
  A New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.
• Red Boiling Springs — 16 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 17 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.
• Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum State Park — 22 mi
  A replica of the log cabin where the secretary of state and Nobel laureate was born in 1871, with a museum of his belongings, in Pickett County's hills.

More markers nearby

• Abraham Hananiah — 2.1 mi
• Free Hill(s) Community — 6.0 mi
• Fisk Female Academy — 9.2 mi
• The Austin Peay Bridge — 9.7 mi