Bledsoe's Station - History - Early Exploration

Early Exploration

For thousands of years, the mineral springs at Bledsoe's Lick attracted buffalo and other large animals, and subsequently drew Native American hunters to the area. Native Americans were hunting around Bledsoe's Lick as early as 12,000 years ago during the Paleo-Indian period, and camped sporadically in the area throughout the Archaic (8000-1000 BC) and Woodland (1000 BC - 1000 AD) periods. During the Mississippian period (c. 1000–1450 AD), a substantial village had been established at the Castalian Springs Mound Site, a few hundred yards from the mineral springs. The village covered 40 acres (0.16 km2) and contained at least 12 mounds. By the time the first Euro-American explorers arrived in the area in the mid-18th century, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Creek claimed the area as a hunting ground.

Among the first documented English explorers in the Upper Cumberland region were the long hunters, so-called because of the long duration of their hunting expeditions. The long hunters typically followed the Cumberland River and its headwaters from southwestern Virginia into Middle Tennessee. Expeditions led by Henry Scaggs in 1765 and James Smith in 1766 passed through what is now Sumner County and hunted extensively in the Upper Cumberland region. In 1769, an expedition led by Kasper Mansker spent several months in the Upper Cumberland area, eventually sending two canoes full of furs downriver to Natchez, Mississippi. Mansker returned to the Upper Cumberland in 1771 with a larger group of hunters— among them Isaac Bledsoe— and collected several thousand skins. In 1772, Mansker and Bledsoe led a third expedition to the Upper Cumberland region. This group established a base camp along Station Camp Creek (giving the creek its name) a few miles to the west near Gallatin. It was during this third expedition that Bledsoe followed the ancient buffalo paths to the creek and salt lick that now bear his name, and where he would eventually construct his fort.

In the late 1770s, long hunter and explorer Thomas "Bigfoot" Spencer led a hunting expedition that camped near Bledsoe's Lick. Spencer remained throughout 1778, spending the winter in a hollowed-out sycamore tree just south of the mineral springs. Spencer spent much of the year building cabins in the area, believing (mistakenly) that if he constructed cabins on certain tracts of land, he could lay claim to these tracts.