Unicoi County / Town of Erwin

Erwin grew with the railroads. The first line came through the valley in 1886, and five companies ran trains here by 1908, among them the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio, which crossed four mountain ranges on eighty bridges and fifty tunnels. In September 1916 the Clinchfield yard became the town's best-known scene when Mary, a circus elephant who had killed her trainer in Kingsport, was hanged from a railroad derrick before about two thousand people. The chain snapped the first time and she fell; she died on the second try.

What the plaque says

Unicoi County Town of Erwin (Side 1)Unicoi County was formed during the Reconstruction era from parts of Washington and Carter counties on March 23, 1875. Representative Alfred A. Taylor introduced a bill in the Tennessee Legislature and insisted that the county's name come from a Cherokee word representing the fog-draped Unaka Mountains. The first meeting for the elected officials was January 3, 1876, at the Indian Creek Baptist Church. For the Centennial in 1975, the motto on the new seal of Unicoi County was "The Valley Beautiful." (Side 2) The town was laid out in March of 1876 on land donated by David J.N. Ervin, William Love, and G. Garland for the creation of a county seat. Vanderbilt was the town's first name. In 1879, the state approved a new name of Ervin, but a United States Post Office mix-up gave the town its lasting name of Erwin. Earlier postal designations of Greasy Cove, Unaka, and Longmire identified the area. In 1891, Erwin was incorporated and the Board of Mayor and Aldermen met in 1892.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 2.0 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 11 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 16 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.
• Roan Mountain and Carvers Gap — 17 mi
  The saddle on the Tennessee-North Carolina line where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Roan Highlands' grass balds, with Catawba rhododendron gardens, rare spruce-fir forest and the site of the Cloudland Hotel.

More markers nearby

• Blue Ridge Pottery — steps away
• Battle of Red Banks — 2.3 mi
• Keystone Pottery — 5.1 mi
• Camp Cordell Hull — 5.4 mi