Morganton Crossing

The river Sherman's men bridged here in December 1863 later carried one of the landmark cases in American environmental law. TVA began Tellico Dam in 1967, and in August 1973 University of Tennessee biologist David Etnier found the snail darter in the Little Tennessee's shoals. University law faculty and students sued under the new Endangered Species Act, and in June 1978 the Supreme Court held in TVA v. Hill that the act barred finishing the nearly complete dam. Congress exempted the project in September 1979, and that November the gates closed over about 16,500 acres of valley.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 3.7 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.
• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 4.4 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 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.
• Cades Cove — 24 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.

More markers nearby

• National Campground — 3.1 mi
• Cherokee Villages — 3.6 mi
• Sequoyah — 3.6 mi
• Fort Loudoun — 3.9 mi