Cavett's Station

At dawn on September 25, 1793, a Cherokee war party, put by one account near a thousand strong and led jointly by John Watts, Bob Benge, James Vann and Doublehead, had meant to strike Knoxville but stood eight miles short. It turned on Alexander Cavett's fortified cabin instead. By that account Benge promised under a white flag that the settlers would be spared if they surrendered; all but a small boy were killed. Five years earlier John Sevier's men had killed the principal chief Old Tassel under a flag of truce. The cabin's exact site is still disputed.

What the plaque says

Cavett's Station About 1/2 mile north was this early fortified settlement. Here on Sept. 25, 1793, Alexander Cavett and 12 other settlers were massacred by a Cherokee war party under Doublehead, one of the more savage chiefs of the tribe.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — 8.5 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 9.6 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• American Museum of Science and Energy — 12 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 13 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.

More markers nearby

• States' View — 1.4 mi
• Robert Reynolds — 2.8 mi
• Sutherland Avenue McGhee Tyson Airport — 5.1 mi
• Archibald Roane — 5.9 mi