Morganton, Tennessee
| Morganton | |
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| Former town | |
Morganton in 1939
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 Morganton
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| Coordinates: 35°38′36″N 84°13′38″W / 35.64333°N 84.22722°WCoordinates: 35°38′36″N 84°13′38″W / 35.64333°N 84.22722°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Tennessee |
| County | Loudon |
| Time zone | Eastern (EST) (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
Morganton was a community once located in Loudon County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Although now submerged by Tellico Lake, during its heyday in the 19th century Morganton thrived as a flatboat port and regional business center. An important ferry operated at Morganton for nearly 170 years.
Due largely to the decline in river trade that occurred in the mid-19th century with the construction of railroads in East Tennessee, Morganton was mostly deserted by the time the Tennessee Valley Authority started buying up property for the construction of Tellico Dam in the late 1960s. Today, the Morganton Cemetery, which overlooks the now-flooded townsite, is all that remains of the former town. A road and TWRA boat ramp are named for Morganton.
The Little Tennessee River rises in the Appalachian Mountains of Georgia and meanders its way through southwestern North Carolina before entering Tennessee, where it flows for roughly 54 miles (87 km) before emptying into the Tennessee River near Lenoir City. The completion of Tellico Dam at the river's mouth in 1979 created a lake that spans the lower 33 miles (53 km) of the river. Morganton was located 13.7 miles (22.0 km) above the mouth of the Little Tennessee at the river's confluence with Bakers Creek, which flows westward from Maryville.
The Morganton site is visible from the junction of East Coast Tellico Parkway and Morganton Road, just west of Greenback. The area is under the management of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Morganton area was part of the lands ceded by the Cherokee with the signing of the First Treaty of Tellico in 1798. The first Euro-American settlers had arrived at the mouth of Bakers Creek in 1796, however, when the land was still claimed by the Cherokee. Several major villages of the Overhill Cherokee were located upstream from the Morganton site (the village of Mialoquo was situated just around Wears Bend, on the opposite side of the river), although most of these villages had either been destroyed or were in decline by the late 1790s. Ethnologist James Mooney recorded a Cherokee legend regarding curiously blazed trees on the banks "opposite Morganton" that supposedly marked the location of hidden mines.
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Wikipedia