Historical Marker
Fort Adair
Knoxville, Knox County · Tennessee
John Adair, a Revolutionary veteran and one of the area's first settlers, built a four-room log house on White's Creek that became a stockaded supply station for the Cumberland Guard, the militia that escorted emigrants toward the Cumberland settlements. Several families joined him. Sources date it to 1788, 1789 or 1791. The works were abandoned as a fortification in the 1810s, though East Tennessee militia camped there in January 1814 at the start of the Creek War. A Daughters of the American Revolution stone from 1924 still marks it.
What the plaque says
Fort Adair Established in 1788, this fort was used as a depot of supplies for the Cumberland Guard, the militia organization which supplied armed protection for parties of emigrants to the Cumberland Settlements, later the town of Nashborough, now Nashville
Where it stands
36.02630, -83.92740 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 4.0 miKnoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
- Blount Mansion — 4.6 miThe 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
- Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 13 miThe 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.
- Museum of Appalachia — 13 miJohn Rice Irwin's 65-acre collection of moved log cabins and mountain objects north of Knoxville, opened in 1969, with a cabin believed to be Mark Twain's father's.