Bearden (Knoxville, Tennessee)

Bearden is a neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, located along Kingston Pike in West Knoxville. Developed primarily as an agrarian community in the 19th century, this neighborhood now lies at the heart of one of Knoxville's major commercial corridors. Named for former Knoxville mayor and Tennessee state legislator, Marcus De Lafayette Bearden (1830–1885), the community was annexed by Knoxville in 1962.

Bearden lies along Kingston Pike (U.S. Route 70 and U.S. Route 11) and adjacent roads, approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Knoxville's downtown area. It traditionally emcompasses the Kingston Pike corridor between Lyons View Pike on the east and Sutherland Avenue on the west, though the term "Bearden" can loosely refer to the entire Kingston Pike area between Sequoyah Hills and Turkey Creek. The West Hills neighborhood lies northwest of Bearden, Forest Heights lies opposite Sutherland to the north, and Ebenezer Mill lies to the southwest.

What is now Bearden began as a small community that developed around a fortified house, which was probably located somewhere near the modern junction of Kingston Pike and Northshore Drive. This community was initially known as "Erin," presumably after the large number of Irish settlers that inhabited the area. In 1792, Knoxville surveyor Charles McClung surveyed the "Kingston Road" — the forerunner of the modern Kingston Pike— which was built to connect Knoxville with Campbell's Station (modern Farragut). This brought increased settlement to western Knox County.

During the late-18th century, the Bearden area was one of the more hostile areas in Knox County. The area's earliest settler, James Miller, was allegedly murdered shortly after his arrival in the early 1790s. In September 1793, near the end of the Cherokee–American wars, a large Chickamauga Cherokee and Creek contingent attacked and destroyed Cavet's Station, which stood near Bearden, and massacred 12 of the station's 13 inhabitants. Even after Native American hostilities had ceased, the Bearden area remained a dangerous place. In the early 1800s, the stretch of the Kingston Road west of Bearden had been nicknamed "Murderers' Hollow."

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