Roane County, Tennessee

Roane County, Tennessee
Roane County Courthouse in Kingston
Location in the U.S. state of Tennessee
Tennessee's location in the U.S.
Founded	1801
Named for	Archibald Roane
Seat	Kingston
Largest city	Harriman
Area
• Total	395 sq mi (1,023 km2)
• Land	361 sq mi (935 km2)
• Water	34 sq mi (88 km2), 8.7%
Population (est.)
• (2015)	52,753
• Density	150/sq mi (58/km²)
Congressional district	3rd
Time zone	Eastern: UTC-5/-4
Website	www.roanegov.org

Roane County is a county of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 54,181. Its county seat is Kingston.

Roane County is included in the Knoxville, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Roane County was formed in 1801, and named for Archibald Roane, the second Governor of Tennessee. Upon the creation of the Southwest Territory in 1790, the territory's governor, William Blount, initially wanted to locate the territorial capital at the mouth of the Clinch River, but was unable to obtain title to the land from the Cherokee. Kingston, Roane's county seat, is rooted in Fort Southwest Point, a frontier fort constructed in the early 1790s.

During the Civil War, Roane County, like many East Tennessee counties, was largely pro-Union. When Tennessee voted on the Ordinance of Secession on June 8, 1861, Roane Countians voted 1,568 to 454 in favor of remaining in the Union. In October 1861, Union guerrilla William B. Carter organized the East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy from a command post in Kingston. During the Knoxville Campaign in December 1863, a Union force led by General James G. Spears scattered a small Confederate force led by John R. Hart near Kingston.

In the years following the Civil War, Rockwood grew into a major iron and coal mining center with the establishment of the Roane Iron Company by General John T. Wilder. Iron ore and coal were mined on Walden Ridge and shipped to Rockwood, where the ore was converted into pig iron. The pig iron was then shipped to rolling mills in Knoxville or Chattanooga.