Pigeon Forge

The forge gave the town its name, but the settlement was Fanshiers before it. The post office opened in 1841 with William K. Love as postmaster, and the town did not incorporate until 1961. Accounts date Isaac Love's bloomery forge on the Little Pigeon to 1817 or to 1820. Pig iron for it came from Sweden Furnace, and a flour mill later took the forge's place on the river. A forge hammer and fittings are kept nearby.

What the plaque says

Pigeon Forge About 3/4 mile southeast, Isaac Love operated a forge on the site of the flour mill on Pigeon River in 1820, making bar iron. Ore came from an orebank about 3 miles east, later pig-iron came from Sweden Furnace, 5 miles east. Forge hammer and fittings are nearby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Newfound Gap — 13 mi
  The lowest drivable pass through the Smokies, at 5,046 feet on the Tennessee and North Carolina line, where Roosevelt dedicated the park in 1940 and Kuwohi's Cherokee name was restored in 2024.
• Cades Cove — 18 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.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 24 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Blount Mansion — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• Wear's Fort — 2.8 mi
• John H. Reagan — 4.7 mi
• New Salem Baptist Church — 5.8 mi
• John Porter McCown — 5.9 mi