Hiwassee College

Hiwassee began as a Methodist campground school at Bat Creek and had one college-educated staff member, its first president, Robert Doak, a Presbyterian, who also served as senior professor. Students entered around fourteen. Two literary societies, the Eromathesian and the Erolethian, held weekly debates and were the main social life. Albert H. Roberts, a future governor, graduated in 1889. By 1893 the college had six buildings on ninety-five acres for about a hundred students, and in the late nineteenth century the Holston Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, took control.

What the plaque says

Hiwassee College Hiwassee College, chartered in 1849, evolved from a school which had been under the leadership of Dr. M. Gibson and Robert Doak at Bat Creek Campground. For many years serving as a school dedicated to educating youth in the Appalachian area, it is now a junior college under the ownership of the Holston Conference Methodist Church. The first graduate of the school was David M. Key, who served as Postmaster-General under President Rutherford B. Hayes. Hiwassee College Hiwassee College, chartered in 1849, evolved from a school which had been under the leadership of Dr. M. Gibson and Robert Doak at Bat Creek Campground. The school became a college and junior college under the Holston Conference Methodist Church. Hiwassee College closed in 2019, after operating for 170 years. The Bruderhof church community acquired the property in 2020.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 8.5 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 8.7 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 23 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.

More markers nearby

• John Crawford Vaughn — 2.6 mi
• Estes Kefauver — 3.3 mi
• Lost Sea — 4.2 mi
• Sequoyah — 7.7 mi