Editing Loudon County, Tennessee (section)

==History==
{{See also|Blair's Ferry Storehouse|Lenoir Cotton Mill}}
Loudon County was formed on May 27, 1870, from portions of [[Roane County, Tennessee|Roane]], [[Monroe County, Tennessee|Monroe]] and [[Blount County, Tennessee|Blount]] counties.<ref name=tehc>Joe Spence, "[http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=810 Loudon County]," ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture''. Retrieved: October 22, 2013.</ref>  Originally, it was named Christiana County, but a few days later the name was changed to Loudon in honor of nearby colonial-era [[Fort Loudoun (Tennessee)|Fort Loudoun]]. The fort was named for [[John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun]] and a commander of British forces during the [[French and Indian Wars]]. In August 1870, the county officers were chosen. On September 5, 1870, the county court was organized at the Baptist Church in Loudon. This church became the temporary quarters of the county court until the new building, built by J. W. Clark & Brothers, was finished in 1872.<ref name=tehc /> 
[[Bussell Island]], at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, was inhabited by Native Americans for several thousand years before the arrival of the region's first European settlers.<ref>M.R. Harrington, ''Cherokee and Earlier Remains on Upper Tennessee River'' (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1922), pp. 61–82.</ref>  The [[Overhill Cherokee]] village of [[Mialoquo (Cherokee town)|Mialoquo]] was located along the Little Tennessee near modern Tellico Village.<ref>Kurt Russ and Jefferson Chapman, ''Archaeological Investigations at the Eighteenth Century Overhill Cherokee Town of Mialoquo (40MR3)'' (University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology, Report of Investigations 37, 1983), pp. 16-18.</ref>  Fort Loudoun was constructed by the British near modern [[Vonore, Tennessee|Vonore]] in 1756, and was destroyed by the Cherokee four years later.
[[File:Loudon County Creation.svg|left|thumb|Loudon County was formed from parts of [[Roane County, Tennessee|Roane]], [[Monroe County, Tennessee|Monroe]] and [[Blount County, Tennessee|Blount]] counties.]]
One of the earliest American settlements in what is now Loudon County was a river port and ferry known as [[Morganton, Tennessee|Morganton]], once located on the banks of the Little Tennessee River near modern Greenback. Morganton thrived during the early 19th century, but declined with the rise of the railroad in the latter half of the century. The town's remnants were inundated by Tellico Lake in the 1970s.<ref>James Polhemus and Richard Polhemus, ''An Assessment of the Archaeological Potential of Townsite of Morganton in Loudon County, Tennessee'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: Tennessee Valley Authority, 1978), pp. 1-2.</ref>

Lenoir City is rooted in a plantation established by [[William Ballard Lenoir]] in 1810, which by the 1850s included a railroad stop known as Lenoir Station. The Lenoir City Company, established by Knoxville financiers [[Charles McClung McGhee]] and [[Edward J. Sanford]], platted modern Lenoir City in the 1890s.<ref>John Benhart, ''Appalachian Aspirations: The Geography of Urbanization and Development in the Upper Tennessee River Valley, 1865-1900'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2007), pp. 74-79.</ref>

The town of Loudon began as a ferry and later steamboat stop known as Blair's Ferry, established by James Blair and his brother-in-law, John Hudson Carmichael, in the 1810s. The town changed its name to "Loudon" during the early 1850s, when it expanded following the arrival of the railroad.<ref>Benhart, ''Appalachian Aspirations'', pp. 23-25.</ref>  The railroad bridge at Loudon was one of eight bridges targeted for destruction by Union guerillas as part of the [[East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy]] in November 1861, at the outset of the Civil War. The bridge was too well-guarded by Confederate sentries, however, and the guerillas abandoned the effort.<ref>[[Oliver Perry Temple]], ''East Tennessee and the Civil War'' (Cincinnati: The Robert Clark Company, 1899), pp. 370–406.</ref>