Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, and Missouri to the northwest. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, and the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017.
Murfreesboro is a city in, and the county seat of, Rutherford County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 108,755 according to the 2010 census, up from 68,816 residents certified in 2000. In 2017, census estimates showed a population of 136,372. The city is the center of population of Tennessee, located 34 miles (55 km) southeast of downtown Nashville in the Nashville metropolitan area of Middle Tennessee. It is Tennessee's fastest growing major city and one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Murfreesboro is also home to Middle Tennessee State University, the second largest undergraduate university in the state of Tennessee, with 22,729 total students as of fall 2014.
The Army of Tennessee was the principal Confederate army operating between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River during the American Civil War. It was formed in late 1862 and fought until the end of the war in 1865, participating in most of the significant battles in the Western Theater. It should not be confused with the Union Army of the Tennessee, named after the Tennessee River.
The Cumberland River is a major waterway of the Southern United States. The 688-mile-long (1,107 km) river drains almost 18,000 square miles (47,000 km2) of southern Kentucky and north-central Tennessee. The river flows generally west from a source in the Appalachian Mountains to its confluence with the Ohio River near Paducah, Kentucky, and the mouth of the Tennessee River. Major tributaries include the Obey, Caney Fork, Stones, and Red rivers.
The Cumberland Mountains are a mountain range in the southeastern section of the Appalachian Mountains. They are located in western Virginia, eastern edges of Kentucky, and eastern middle Tennessee, including the Crab Orchard Mountains. Their highest peak, with an elevation of 4,223 feet (1,287 m) above mean sea level, is High Knob, which is located near Norton, Virginia.
The Tennessee Valley is the drainage basin of the Tennessee River and is largely within the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches from southwest Kentucky to north Georgia and from northeast Mississippi to the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The border of the valley is known as the Tennessee Valley Divide. The Tennessee Valley contributes greatly to the formation of Tennessee's legally recognized Grand Divisions.
A longhunter was an 18th-century explorer and hunter who made expeditions into the American frontier wilderness for as much as six months at a time. Historian Emory Hamilton asserts that "The Long Hunter was peculiar to Southwest Virginia only, and nowhere else on any frontier did such hunts ever originate" although the term has been used loosely to describe any unofficial American explorer of the period. Most long hunts started in the Holston River Valley near Chilhowie, Virginia. The hunters came from there and the adjacent valley of the Clinch River, where they were land owners or residents. The parties of two or three men usually started their hunts in October and ended toward the end of March or early in April.
Standing Stone State Park is a state park in Overton County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The park consists of 855 acres (3.46 km2) along the shoreline of the man-made 69-acre (0.28 km2) Standing Stone Lake. The 11,000-acre (45 km2) Standing Stone State Forest surrounds the park.
The Old Stone Fort is a prehistoric Native American structure located in Coffee County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. The structure was most likely built between 80 and 550 AD during the Middle Woodland period. It is the most complex hilltop enclosure found in the South and was likely used for ceremonial purposes rather than defense.
Mound Bottom is a prehistoric Native American complex in Cheatham County, Tennessee, located in the Southeastern United States. The complex, which consists of earthen platform and burial mounds, a 7-acre central plaza, and habitation areas, was occupied between approximately 1000 and 1300 AD, during the Mississippian period.
Long Hunter State Park is a state park in Davidson County and Rutherford County, Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. The park is mostly situated along the eastern shores of Percy Priest Lake, an artificial lake created by an impoundment of the Stones River.
The Eva site (40BN12) is a prehistoric Native American site in Benton County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. Located along an ancient channel of the Tennessee River, the Eva site saw extensive periods of occupation during the Middle and Late Archaic period. The site's well-defined midden layers helped investigators identify three distinct Archaic cultures, the oldest of which was first identified at Eva and is still known as the "Eva culture" or the "Eva phase."
Old Town is an archaeological site in Williamson County, Tennessee near Franklin. The site includes the remnants of a Native American village and mound complex of the Mississippian culture, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as Old Town Archaeological Site (40WM2).
Obion Mounds, also known as the Work Farm Site, is an archaeological site of the Mississippian culture located north of Paris, Henry County, Tennessee, on the north fork of the Obion River. The site is the largest Mississippian site in western Tennessee and was probably inhabited by 1000 to 1100 CE. and abandoned by 1300. It consists of seven platform mounds surrounding a plaza measuring 200 feet (61 m) by 900 feet (270 m). The largest mound at the site was 500 feet (150 m) wide by 30 feet (9.1 m) tall with a ramp leading to its summit. At one point the mounds and plaza were surrounded with a wooden palisade. The site also has 2 depressions thought to be borrow pits from which the soil to construct the mounds was taken. In 1845 the owner of the site, Solomon Hartsfield, was digging in one of the borrow pits when he discovered a stone statue. The statue was later damaged in a house fire during the late 19th century and only its head now remains. It is the only Mississippian site in western Tennessee to have produced such a statue.
The Castalian Springs Mound State Historic Site (40SU14) is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located near the small unincorporated community of Castalian Springs in Sumner County, Tennessee. The site was first excavated in the 1890s and again as recently as the 2005 to 2011 archaeological field school led by Dr. Kevin E. Smith. A number of important finds have been associated with the site, most particularly several examples of Mississippian stone statuary and the Castalian Springs shell gorget held by the National Museum of the American Indian. The site is owned by the State of Tennessee and is a State Historic Site managed by the Bledsoe's Lick Association for the Tennessee Historical Commission. The site is not currently open to the public.
Stone box graves were a method of burial employed by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture in the American Midwest and Southeast. Their construction was especially common in the Cumberland River Basin around Nashville, Tennessee
The Swallow Bluff Island Mounds (40HR16) is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located near Saltillo on Swallow Bluff Island in the Tennessee River in Hardin County, Tennessee.
