Townsend, TN

Townsend is a Blount County city whose modern story grew from the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company, but the human history here reaches back far earlier. Cherokee communities stood along Little River, and a branch of the Great Indian Warpath forked near this site toward the Overhill towns and North Carolina. Today the city sits in Tuckaleechee Cove, one of the Smokies’ limestone windows, with the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center and Little River Railroad and Lumber Company Museum telling the area’s layered story. The local shorthand is the west-side Smokies town where a railroad museum, Cherokee history, and the park road all meet.