Pinson, TN

Pinson is an unincorporated community in Madison County, Tennessee. Pinson lies along U.S. Route 45 between Jackson and Henderson, just north of the Chester County line, and State Route 197 also passes through the community. Pinson is included in the Jackson, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area. A newcomer can read Pinson through the overlap of its older landmarks, surrounding geography, and current places. For a newcomer, Pinson comes into focus through those concrete links among its past, landscape, and current routines. Pinson is the site of the Pinson Mounds, the largest Middle Woodland period Indian mound group in the United States, and the Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park dedicated to their study.

In 1820, a group of five surveyors including Joel Pinson and Memucan Hunt Howard discovered a Middle Woodland period platform mound in the Pinson area while surveying land grants for Colonel Thomas Henderson. The surveyors dubbed the mound Mount Pinson after Joel, and a post office was established there under that name in 1827.