Appalachian Community Histories – Cherokee, Grainger County: TVA, Bean Station, and a Small Place on Cherokee Lake
Cherokee, Grainger County, Tennessee, is not the kind of Appalachian community that left behind a thick town history or a long run of city records. It appears first as a place on the map, a small unincorporated populated place in southern Grainger County. The official federal place-name record gives Cherokee as a populated place in Grainger County, Tennessee, with GNIS Feature ID 1314825. That short record is important because it proves the place name, even when the community itself does not appear as a separate municipality, census town, or large commercial center.
Cherokee sits in a landscape where the road, the lake, and the dam explain much of the modern story. State Route 92 runs through this part of Grainger County, while State Route 375, also known as Lakeshore Road, begins at SR 92 in Cherokee and runs toward US 25E and SR 32 in Bean Station. The route follows the north side of Cherokee Lake, tying Cherokee to Bean Station, the reservoir shoreline, and the larger transportation network of eastern Grainger County.
That makes Cherokee less a town with a courthouse square than a community marker in a changed landscape. Its history is best read through the Holston River valley, Cherokee Dam, Cherokee Reservoir, nearby Bean Station, Indian Cave, county records in Rutledge, old road maps, TVA reports, cemetery relocation records, and the surviving newspapers of Grainger County.
Before the Lake
Before Cherokee Lake covered thousands of acres of bottomland, southern Grainger County was shaped by the Holston River and by older roads, farms, mills, churches, schools, and family cemeteries. The name Cherokee also sits within a broader Indigenous history that must be handled carefully. The Cherokee people had deep ancestral ties to Southern Appalachia, and the National Park Service describes the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians as having deep ancestral ties to the Southern Appalachian region. The Cherokee Nation’s own historical overview describes the shrinking of Cherokee homelands through treaties and removal pressures, including lands in southeastern Tennessee.
In Grainger County, Indian Cave near present-day Blaine is one of the major local places where Indigenous history enters the county’s written memory. The county’s own history page says the cave area was used for centuries, that Indigenous peoples settled in the area around 1000 CE, and that a Cherokee village was located west of the main cave entrance in the 1700s. The same account connects the cave to the 1779 Donelson party route down the Holston River.
That older story should not be confused too easily with the later mapped community of Cherokee near SR 92 and SR 375. The modern place name belongs to a road and reservoir community. The older Cherokee presence belongs to the larger history of the Holston River valley and Southern Appalachia. Together, they show why the name carries more weight than a casual map label.
Grainger County and the Local Record
Grainger County was formed in 1796 from Knox and Hawkins counties, and its earliest local history is scattered through tax records, land grants, deeds, court files, church records, cemeteries, and family papers. For Cherokee, that matters because the place itself may not appear as a separate town in older census schedules. Researchers have to work outward from roads, districts, neighbors, schools, churches, cemeteries, and landowners.
The Grainger County Archives in Rutledge is one of the strongest places to begin. Its holdings include many of the county’s oldest pre-1960 records, with bound volumes, loose papers, microfilm, tax lists, East Tennessee land grants, federal census records from 1830 through 1930, Grainger County News holdings from 1922 through 2007, and Grainger Today from 2004 through 2019. The archives also list indexes for marriage records, estate and guardianship settlements, county court documents, circuit court cases, and chancery court cases.
Those records are the backbone of any deeper Cherokee history. They can help trace who owned land before Cherokee Reservoir, which families lived near the future lake, where roads crossed farms, which cemeteries were moved, and how the community fit into the broader life of southern Grainger County.
The Newspaper Trail
The Grainger County News is another key source. It began in Rutledge in February 1917, later absorbed the Grainger County Herald, and has surviving early issues from 1917 to 1922 available through Chronicling America. For small places like Cherokee, newspapers often preserve what formal histories miss. They record school events, church meetings, road work, farm notices, deaths, marriages, advertisements, court notices, and community correspondence.
Because Cherokee did not develop as a large incorporated town, its local history may appear under nearby place names. A researcher may need to search for Cherokee, Cherokee Lake, Cherokee Dam, Lakeshore Road, SR 92, SR 375, Bean Station, Blaine, Rutledge, Indian Cave, German Creek, and family names connected to the area. The absence of one neat “Cherokee” column in the newspaper does not mean there was no history. It means the history was folded into the daily life of rural Grainger County.
Cherokee Dam and the Turning Point of 1940
The major turning point came with the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA began construction on Cherokee Dam on August 1, 1940, and completed it on December 5, 1941, on what TVA describes as a crash schedule. The dam is 175 feet high and 6,760 feet long, and Cherokee Reservoir has nearly 400 miles of shoreline and about 28,780 acres of water surface.
Those numbers explain why Cherokee’s modern story cannot be separated from the reservoir. Cherokee Lake did not simply add scenery to the area. It remade the geography. It changed roads, farms, river crossings, cemeteries, recreation, land ownership, and the meaning of nearby communities.
TVA’s later land management material shows how much land around the reservoir remained part of the agency’s public land system. The Cherokee Reservoir Land Management Plan covers 8,186.6 acres of TVA public land divided into 149 parcels, each assigned a land use allocation zone. The plan also describes Cherokee Reservoir as a recreation destination with campgrounds, hiking trails, views of the dam and lake, and developed recreation facilities at the dam reservation.
For Cherokee, this means the community’s twentieth-century history belongs to the larger story of TVA modernization in Appalachia. The same project that created hydroelectric power and flood storage also changed the land under people’s feet.
Families, Graves, and Readjustment
The human cost of Cherokee Reservoir appears most clearly in TVA population and grave removal records. Warren R. West’s 1943 TVA report, “Final report-population readjustment-Cherokee area,” is preserved in the University of Tennessee’s Tennessee Valley Authority Pamphlet Collection. That collection houses more than 300 pamphlets describing TVA activities between 1927 and 1965, and West’s report sits specifically among population readjustment reports from 1935 to 1953.
Another important source lead is TVA’s 1940 “Population readjustment studies of Bean Station community, Grainger County, Cherokee area,” listed by the Tennessee State Library and Archives in its Grainger County bibliography. Bean Station matters here because it stood near the reservoir zone and because the old community landscape around Bean Station was one of the places changed by the Cherokee project.
The cemetery record is just as important. James L. Douthat’s compiled volume, “Cherokee Reservoir Grave Removals by T.V.A.,” is based on TVA grave removal records and covers the upper East Tennessee counties involved in the Cherokee Reservoir project, including Hawkins, Grainger, Jefferson, and Hamblen. Grave removal records are often some of the most personal records left by reservoir construction. They show families, burial grounds, reinterments, and cemeteries that were altered or lost when the lake came in.
That is one of the most important things to remember about Cherokee. The lake may look permanent now, but it was once a disruption. Under the water and along the shore are older roads, farms, graves, and memories that had to be moved, recorded, or left behind.
Bean Station, War Memory, and a Covered Battlefield
Cherokee’s history also connects to Bean Station, one of the best-known historic communities in Grainger County. The Civil War Trails material for Bean’s Station says the battlefield lies partly under Cherokee Lake, with some earthworks remaining. The trail description places the battle in the aftermath of Confederate General James Longstreet’s withdrawal from Knoxville in December 1863, when he turned against Union forces near Bean’s Station.
That connection gives the Cherokee Lake area a layered history. The reservoir did not cover empty ground. It reached into a landscape already marked by Indigenous history, settlement, road travel, Civil War movement, farms, taverns, churches, cemeteries, and county memory. When the lake rose, it changed how people could see and access that past.
A Community of Roads and Water
Today, Cherokee is best understood as a small Grainger County place at the meeting of roads and water. SR 375 begins at SR 92 in Cherokee and follows the Cherokee Lake side of the county toward Bean Station. TDOT’s Grainger County highway map places the area within the modern road system of the county, where state routes, local roads, protected areas, and the reservoir define travel across southern Grainger County.
That road geography matters because many Appalachian communities survive in practical directions before they survive in written histories. People know a place because a road begins there, because a lake access is nearby, because a family cemetery sits off a lane, because a church or old school once served the area, or because older residents remember the names that maps only preserve in small type.
Cherokee is one of those places. It is not a city story. It is a community story built from official map records, TVA files, county archives, reservoir plans, road maps, cemeteries, and local memory.
The Meaning of Cherokee in Grainger County
The story of Cherokee, Grainger County, is a reminder that small Appalachian places do not need a courthouse, railroad depot, or incorporated government to matter. Some places matter because they sit at the edge of a great change. Cherokee sits near one of the biggest changes southern Grainger County ever experienced.
Before the dam, this was a Holston River landscape of farms, roads, graveyards, caves, and rural communities. After the dam, it became a lake landscape, tied to hydroelectric power, flood control, shoreline development, recreation, and TVA land management. Families moved. Graves moved. Roads changed. Bean Station’s old landscape was altered. The lake became the new landmark.
Cherokee remains a small name on the map, but the history around it is large. It belongs to the Indigenous past of the Holston Valley, the settlement history of Grainger County, the Civil War memory of Bean Station, the county records of Rutledge, and the TVA transformation of East Tennessee. Its story is not found in one source. It has to be gathered from many records, the way many Appalachian community histories do.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Geological Survey. “Cherokee.” Geographic Names Information System. Feature ID 1314825. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/1314825.
Tennessee Department of Transportation. “Grainger County General Highway Map.” Tennessee Department of Transportation. https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tdot/maps/county-maps-%28us-shields%29/a-g/Grainger%20County.pdf.
“State Route 375.” 100 Years of Road Funding. https://www.100yearsofroadfunding.com/sr375.html.
Tennessee Valley Authority. “Cherokee.” Tennessee Valley Authority. https://www.tva.com/energy/our-power-system/hydroelectric/cherokee/.
Tennessee Valley Authority. “Cherokee Reservoir Land Management Plan.” Tennessee Valley Authority. https://www.tva.com/environment/environmental-stewardship/land-management/reservoir-land-management-plans/cherokee-reservoir-land-management-plan/.
West, Warren R. “Final Report-Population Readjustment-Cherokee Area.” Tennessee Valley Authority, 1943. Tennessee Valley Authority Pamphlet Collection, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/24736/.
Tennessee Valley Authority. “Population Readjustment Studies of Bean Station Community, Grainger County, Cherokee Area.” Knoxville: Tennessee Valley Authority, 1940. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
Howes, Robert M. “The Bean Station Tavern Restoration Project.” Tennessee Valley Authority, 1944. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
Tennessee Valley Authority. “Maps, Cherokee Reservoir, TVA, Oversize.” Google Books catalog record. https://books.google.com/books/about/MAPS_CHEROKEE_RESERVOIR_TVA_OVERSIZE.html?id=ZA_RzwEACAAJ.
East Tennessee State University Archives. “Cherokee Reservoir, Holston River Navigation Map.” Tennessee Valley Authority Maps and Surveys Division, 1955. https://archives.etsu.edu/repositories/2/resources.
Grainger County Archives. “Holdings of the Grainger County Archives.” Grainger County Tennessee Archive. https://graingerarchives.org/indexes/.
Grainger County Archives. “Indexes.” Grainger County Tennessee Archive. https://graingerarchives.org/indexes/.
The Online Books Page. “Grainger County News.” University of Pennsylvania. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=graingerconews.
Library of Congress. “About The Grainger County News.” Chronicling America. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99065781/.
Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. “Cherokee Dam, Tennessee Tennessee Valley Authority TVA. Spillway.” Jefferson County, Tennessee, June 1942. Photograph. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017873098/.
Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. “Cherokee Dam, Tennessee Tennessee Valley Authority TVA. Gantry Crane and Spillway.” Jefferson County, Tennessee, June 1942. Photograph. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017832641/.
Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. “Cherokee Dam, Tennessee Tennessee Valley Authority TVA. Rigger.” Jefferson County, Tennessee, June 1942. Photograph. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Cherokee%20Dam%20Rothstein.
Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. “Cherokee Dam, Tennessee Tennessee Valley Authority TVA. Installation of Third 30,000 Kilowatt Generator at Cherokee Dam.” Jefferson County, Tennessee, June 1942. Photograph. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Cherokee%20Dam%20Rothstein.
Douthat, James L. Cherokee Reservoir Grave Removals by T.V.A. Signal Mountain, TN: Mountain Press, 2003. https://books.google.com/books/about/Cherokee_Reservoir_Grave_Removals_by_T_V.html?id=DlWhGAAACAAJ.
Douthat, James L. Cherokee Reservoir Grave Removals by TVA. Southern Genealogy Books. https://southerngenealogybooks.com/product/cherokee-reservoir-grave-removals-by-tva/.
Heritage Books. “Cherokee Reservoir Grave Removals, Tennessee Valley Authority.” https://heritagebooks.com/products/101-tn1257.
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” Tennessee Secretary of State. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Bibliography of Tennessee Local History Sources: Grainger County.” https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/bibliographies/bibgrainger.htm.
Goodpasture, A. V., ed. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Grainger County. Nashville: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1887. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
McGinnis, Robert. Sights and Sounds of Appalachian East Tennessee: Grainger County. 1991. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
Grainger County Bicentennial Committee. Grainger County, Tennessee Bicentennial, 1776–1976. Rutledge, TN: Grainger County Bicentennial Committee, 1976. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
Tennessee Historical Records Survey. Guide to Church Vital Statistics Records in Tennessee: Grainger County. Nashville: Tennessee Historical Records Survey, 1942. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
United States Department of Agriculture. Soil Survey, Grainger County, Tennessee. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Grainger County.” https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-grainger-county.
Tennessee Valley Authority. An Agricultural-Industrial Survey of Grainger County, Tennessee. Knoxville: Tennessee Valley Authority, 1934. Listed in Tennessee State Library and Archives, “Bibliography of Tennessee Local History Sources: Grainger County.” https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/bibliographies/bibgrainger.htm.
Grainger County, Tennessee. “History.” Grainger County official website. https://www.graingercountytn.com/history/.
Tennessee Civil War Trails. “Civil War Trails Installation Sites with Descriptions.” Tennessee Civil War Trails Program. https://tnmap.tn.gov/civilwar/Civil%20War%20Trails%20Installation%20Sites%20with%20descriptions.pdf.
National Park Service. “Cherokee.” Great Smoky Mountains National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/historyculture/cherokee.htm.
Cherokee Nation. “History.” Cherokee Nation. https://www.cherokee.org/about-the-nation/history/.
United States Department of the Interior. “Cherokee Ancestry.” https://www.doi.gov/tribes/cherokee.
Tennessee Division of Archaeology. “Tennessee Archaeology Awareness Month and State Archaeology Reports.” Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. https://www.tn.gov/environment/program-areas/arch-archaeology.html.
Faulkner, Charles H. “Archaeological Research in Indian Cave, Grainger County, Tennessee.” NSS News 45, no. 10, 1987. National Speleological Society. https://caves.org/publication/nss-news/.
National Archives. “Records of the Tennessee Valley Authority.” Guide to Federal Records, Record Group 142. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/142.html.
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/.
Author Note: Cherokee is one of those small Appalachian places where the story has to be gathered from maps, road records, TVA files, cemeteries, and county archives rather than from one neat town history. I wanted this article to treat the community carefully, especially because Cherokee Lake brought recreation and power while also changing farms, roads, graves, and family memory.