page_title: Sycamore Shoals
section_title: Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park
hierarchical_section_title: Sycamore Shoals / Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park
caption_attribution_description: English: Sycamore Shoals along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee, USA. This view is looking north from the Mountain River Trail (maintained by Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park). This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 66000721
context_page_description: The Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, usually shortened to Sycamore Shoals, is a rocky stretch of river rapids along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Archeological excavations have found Native Americans lived near the shoals since prehistoric times, and Cherokees gathered there. As Europeans began settling the Trans-Appalachian frontier, the shoals proved strategic militarily, as well as shaped the economies of Tennessee and Kentucky. Today, the shoals are protected as a National Historic Landmark and are maintained as part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.
  Explorer James Robertson identified the alluring flatlands at Sycamore Shoals, known as the Watauga Old Fields, in 1770, and led a group of colonists to the area shortly thereafter. In 1772, the Watauga settlers established the Watauga Association, one of the first constitutional governments west of the Appalachian Mountains and the "germ-cell" of what would later become the state of Tennessee.
  In 1775, Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone negotiated the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, in which Henderson's Transylvania Company purchased a large part of modern Kentucky and part of Tennessee from the Cherokee.
context_section_description: In the 20th century, various entities began to acknowledge the importance of Sycamore Shoals in the history of Tennessee and the Trans-Appalachian frontier.  In 1909, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed an obelisk, constructed from local river rock and set on a concrete base, at the intersection of West G Street and Monument Place in Elizabethton, one half-mile from the mouth of Gap Creek at Watauga River, where Tennessee historian J. G. M. Ramsey recorded within his Annals of Tennessee as where Fort Watauga had once stood.
  In 1964, Sycamore Shoals was designated a National Historic Landmark, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.  As part of the United States Bicentennial celebrations, the state of Tennessee decided to reconstruct Fort Watauga.  The state purchased Sycamore Shoals, a small island within the shoals, and an undeveloped stretch of land along the south bank of the Watauga River for the reconstructed fort and the accompanying state park that would interpret it and maintain the shoals.  Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park opened in 1975.  In 1980, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds for the creation of the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, which connects Sycamore Shoals with Kings Mountain National Military Park.
  Today, Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park hosts various annual reenactments regarding the siege of Fort Watauga and the mustering of the Overmountain Men.  A walking trail follows the south bank of the Watauga, allowing easy access to the Sycamore Shoals, with various interpretive signs explaining the various historical events along the way.  In recent years, the relatively low waters along the shoals (which are easy to wade across) have become a popular spot for fly fishing.
caption: Sycamore Shoals, viewed from just off the Mountain River Trail
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