Dandridge is a town in Jefferson County, Tennessee, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County. It is part of the Morristown, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Dandridge is the second oldest city in Tennessee, behind only Jonesborough. The Jefferson County Courthouse, located in downtown Dandridge, contains many items of local historical importance, civil war relics and a museum of local history. There are many old structures in the town of beautiful design and the area contains a large selection of exceptional golf courses.
A large part of Dandridge, including most of the historic commercial center, sits below the high level water mark of Douglas Lake. The historic French Broad Baptist Church was saved from the local Tennessee Valley Authority flood control project by a member of the Swann family, who had contacted Eleanor Roosevelt for assistance.
Geography
Dandridge is located at (36.028493, -83.424010). The town is situated along the northern bank of the Douglas Lake impoundment of the French Broad River, approximately 45 miles (72 km) upstream from the river's confluence with the Holston River and Tennessee River at Knoxville, and approximately 12 miles (19 km) upstream from Douglas Dam.
History
In the 16th century, a substantial Native American chiefdom known as Chiaha was located on Zimmerman's Island, just southwest of Dandridge along the French Broad River. Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto spent several weeks at Chiaha in 1540 and Juan Pardo built a small fort near chiefdom's main village in 1567. Both expeditions were in en route to the chiefdom of Coosa in what is now Georgia. Zimmerman's Island is now submerged by Douglas Lake.
The first Euro-American settlers arrived in Dandridge in 1783, and the town was officially incorporated in 1793 as the county seat of Jefferson County, which had been created the previous year.[7] The town was named for Martha Dandridge Washington, the wife of the first president of the United States.
On December 24, 1863, at the height of the American Civil War, a skirmish occurred at Dandridge as Confederate General James Longstreet and Union General Ambrose Burnside struggled for control of Knoxville. As Longstreet's army retreated to Morristown, a detachment of his army intercepted and routed a pursuing Union brigade just north of Dandridge. The Union troops were forced to fall back to New Market.
The construction of Douglas Dam in 1942 flooded much of the best farmland in Jefferson County, and threatened to flood most all of downtown Dandridge, which was situated below the proposed reservoir's high water mark. Residents of the town successfully petitioned then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, however, pointing out that Dandridge was the only town in the United States named for the wife of George Washington. The Tennessee Valley Authority constructed a saddle dam between downtown Dandridge and the lake. The dam rises almost immediately behind the Town Hall, and runs roughly parallel to Main Street.
