Sweetwater Depot

Union cavalry spent the first summer of peace camped here. The 13th Tennessee Cavalry (US), raised among the Unionists of Carter and Johnson counties and mustered in at Strawberry Plains in the fall of 1863, came here about July 1, 1865, when General Emory Upton had his division headquarters in town. Its regimental history recalls heat, idleness, a camp rumor that the regiment would be sent to the Rio Grande against the French in Mexico, and men unpaid for a year whose captains bought tobacco by the box. It mustered out at Knoxville on September 5.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 14 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 — 14 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 — 18 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

• Longstreet Encampment — 0.3 mi
• TMI Academy — 0.9 mi
• Lost Sea — 4.8 mi
• Hiwassee College — 6.2 mi