Kemmer Stand/Tavern

The road outside the inn ran as a business. In 1799 the legislature named William Walton, William Martin and Robert Kyle to establish it, and it became officially the Cumberland Turnpike, though everyone called it Walton Road. It was fifteen feet wide, with mile markers every three miles and with tollgates and stands, as inns were called, along the way. Crab Orchard Inn, Kemmer's Stand and Johnson's Stand at Mayland served it. Travelers remarked on the steep descent of Walden's Ridge through Kimbrough Gap, though they feared it less than Spencer's Rock.

What the plaque says

Kemmer Stand/Tavern In 1817, John Kemmer purchased land here and built Kemmer Stand, a wayside inn, at the intersection of Burke Road. It was two-story, two-section structure that housed many travelers traversing the Cumberland Plateau. At the crest of this hill lies Walton or Great Stage Road. Built in 1800, it was the first federal road across the Plateau.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cumberland Homesteads and the Homesteads Tower — 4.2 mi
  The largest of the New Deal's subsistence homestead communities, a plateau district of Crab Orchard sandstone houses around an octagonal stone tower that now holds a museum.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 22 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.
• Muddy Pond Mennonite Community — 22 mi
  A Mennonite farming community in Overton County near Monterey, known for sorghum syrup pressed and boiled each fall and for the farm stores along its roads.
• Frozen Head State Park — 28 mi
  A 24,000-acre Cumberland Mountains park around a 3,324-foot peak, made from Brushy Mountain prison lands and the CCC, and home to the Barkley Marathons.

More markers nearby

• Thomas "Big Foot" Spencer — 5.1 mi
• Cumberland Mountain State Park Bridge — 5.1 mi
• Camp Crossville — 11 mi
• John Wood Dodge — 12 mi