Fort Byington

Before it held lecture halls, the ridge was called Barbara Hill, after Governor Blount's daughter. East Tennessee College bought the land in summer 1826 for $600, following advice credited to Thomas Jefferson that the school leave its cramped State Street building for room to grow, and moved there by fall 1828. Workers digging foundations turned up two forgotten graves of early settlers who had died before Knoxville had a cemetery. The earthwork came later, when Union forces fortified the hill southeast of Fort Sanders during the 1863 siege.

What the plaque says

Fort Byington "The Hill," dear to University to Tennessee alumni, was protected by a battery of Federal Cannon and a brigade of infantry during Longstreet's siege of Knoxville, in November, 1863. a line of entrenchments ran across the west and south slopes of the hill, connecting Fort Sanders and Second Creek.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blount Mansion — 0.8 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 — 2.0 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 15 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.
• Museum of Appalachia — 17 mi
  John 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.

More markers nearby

• James Rufus Agee — steps away
• General Clifton Bledsoe Cates 1895-1970 United States Marine Corps — steps away
• University of Tennessee — steps away
• Desegregation of the University of Tennessee — steps away