Old Harrison

Harrison's turn as county seat was short, and its end was watery. The seat moved there across the Tennessee River from Dallas in 1840. Chattanooga, whose growth far outstripped Harrison's, took it over in 1870, once the city had become a railroad hub and a manufacturing center. In 1939 Lake Chickamauga inundated the old towns of Harrison and Dallas, when the Tennessee Valley Authority made Hamilton County a center of its work, and the courthouse town that bore a president's name went under water.

What the plaque says

Old Harrison Hamilton County's first court met at Hasten Poe's tavern near the present Daisy in 1819, later moving to Rawlings' Farm, near the present Dallas. In 1840, a courthouse was built about 500 yards NW of this point, and the new town named for President William Henry Harrison. The county seat moved to Chattanooga in 1871.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Walnut Street Bridge — 12 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 12 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 12 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Ross's Landing — 12 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.

More markers nearby

• Old Dallas — 3.6 mi
• Lost County of Tennessee: The County of James — 5.8 mi
• Tennessee Valley Railroad and Museum — 6.8 mi
• Poe's Tavern — 8.2 mi