Tipton County, Tennessee

Tipton County, Tennessee
Tipton County Courthouse in Covington
Location in the U.S. state of Tennessee
Tennessee's location in the U.S.
Founded	Oct. 29, 1823
Named for	Jacob Tipton, 18th-century soldier
Seat	Covington
Largest city	Covington
Area
• Total	473 sq mi (1,225 km2)
• Land	458 sq mi (1,186 km2)
• Water	15 sq mi (39 km2), 3.2%
Population (est.)
• (2010)	61,870
• Density	133/sq mi (51/km²)
Congressional district	8th
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5
Website	www.tiptonco.com

Tipton County is a county located on the western end of the U.S. state of Tennessee, in the Mississippi Delta region. As of the 2010 census, the population was 61,081. Its county seat is Covington.

Tipton County is part of the Memphis, TN–MS–AR Metropolitan Statistical Area.

From about 10,000 BCE, Paleo-Indians and later Archaic-Indians lived as communities of hunter-gatherers in the area that covers the modern day southern United States. From approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE, the Mississippi Delta was populated by tribes of the Mississippian culture, a mound-building Native American people who had developed in the late Woodland Indian period. While there were chiefdoms and centers along the Mississippi and its tributaries, their major center was at Cahokia, in present-day Illinois east of St. Louis, Missouri.

The Tipton Phase people were a local expression of the Mississippian culture. They still inhabited the region of modern-day Tipton County during the time of first contact with Europeans, at the arrival of the Spanish Hernando de Soto Expedition. By the end of the Mississippian period, the land was claimed and populated by the Chickasaw tribe. The exact origins of the Chickasaw are uncertain.