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| ~ Damian, Charles, and Donner on their Backyard Screen Porch ~ |
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| ~ View Across Street as Seen from the Front Porch of their House ~ |
THE CITY OF CROSSVILLE IN THE STATE OF TENNESSEE
Crossville developed at the intersection of a branch of the Great Stage Road, which connected the Knoxville area with the Nashville area, and the Kentucky Stock Road, a cattle drovers' path connecting Middle Tennessee with Kentucky and later extending south to Chattanooga. These two roads are roughly paralleled by modern US-70 and US-127, respectively.
Around 1800, an early American settler named Samuel Lambeth opened a store at this junction, and the small community that developed around it became known as Lambeth's Crossroads. The store was located at what has become the modern intersection of Main Street and Stanley Street, just south of the courthouse. By the time a post office was established in the 1830s, the community had taken the name of "Crossville". In the early 1850s, James Scott, a merchant from nearby Sparta, purchased the Lambeth store and renamed it Scott's Tavern.
When Cumberland County was formed in 1856, Crossville, being nearest the center of the county, was chosen as county seat. Scott donated the initial 40 acres for the erection of a courthouse and town square.
Crossville and Cumberland County suffered rampant pillaging throughout the Civil War as the well-developed roads made the area accessible to both occupying Union and Confederate forces and bands of renegade guerrillas. With divided communities and families, there was vicious guerrilla warfare, and residents suffered as if there were major battles in the area. The county was divided throughout the conflict, sending a roughly equal number of troops to both sides.
After World War I, U.S. 70 helped connect the town and area to markets for its produce and goods. Additional highways built after World War II improved transportation in the region.
During the Great Depression, the federal government's Subsistence Homestead Division initiated a housing project south of Crossville known as the Cumberland Homesteads. The project's purpose was to provide small farms for several hundred impoverished families. The project's recreational area would later become the nucleus for Cumberland Mountain State Park.
Crossville was a sundown town as late as the 1950s, with a sign at the city limits warning African Americans not to stay after nightfall.
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