Bledsoe's Station

Bledsoe's Station (also called Bledsoe's Fort) was an 18th-century frontier fort located in what is now Castalian Springs, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The fort was built by long hunter and Sumner County pioneer Isaac Bledsoe (c. 1735–1793) in the early 1780s to protect Upper Cumberland settlers and migrants from hostile Native American attacks. While the fort is no longer standing, its location has been verified by archaeological excavations. The site is now part of Bledsoe's Fort Historical Park, a public park established in 1989 by Sumner County residents and Bledsoe's descendants.

Bledsoe's Station was one of a series of outposts built in the Upper Cumberland during the first major migration of Euro-American settlers into the Middle Tennessee area following the American Revolution. The fort was a convenient stopover along Avery's Trace— the main road connecting East and Middle Tennessee at the time. The flood of settlers into the region brought inevitable conflict with the region's Native American inhabitants, and dozens of settlers were killed in the late 1780s and early 1790s. Isaac Bledsoe's brother Anthony (1733–1788) was killed in an ambush at the fort in 1788 and Isaac himself was killed while tending a field just outside the fort in 1793. The end of the Chickamauga Wars the following year ended much of the violence and reduced the fort's necessity.

Bledsoe's Fort Historical Park protects the fort's excavation site (an outline of the fort's walls can be discerned from former excavation trenches) as well as several historic structures, including the Nathaniel Parker Cabin and Hugh Rogan Cottage (both Parker and Rogan were compatriots of Bledsoe) and a pioneer cemetery with an obelisk dedicated to the Bledsoe brothers. The Cheskiki Indian Mounds and the Wynnewood State Historical Site are located immediately east of the park, and the Cragfont State Historical Site is located immediately to the west.