Mansker's Station, also called Mansker's Fort was a station along

Avery's Trace Avery's Trace was the principal road used by settlers travelling from the Knoxville area in East Tennessee to the Nashville area from 1788 to the mid-1830s. In an effort to encourage settlers to move west into the new territory of Tennessee, in ...

in Middle Tennessee. It was built by Kasper Mansker. Kasper Mansker was a

long hunter A longhunter (or long hunter) was an 18th-century explorer and hunter who made expeditions into the American frontier for as much as six months at a time. Historian Emory Hamilton says that "The Long Hunter was peculiar to Southwest Virginia o ...

and explorer from the Virginia area. After his first expedition into the wilderness in 1769, Mansker explored and hunted widely in the area along the

Cumberland River The Cumberland River is a major waterway of the Southern United States. The U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 8, 2011 river drains almost of southern Kentucky and ...

in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky. Mansker's station was a log fort that protected travelers along the road from Indian attacks. Mansker first built the fort along Mansker Creek in 1780, near

Goodlettsville Goodlettsville is a city in Davidson and Sumner counties, Tennessee. Goodlettsville was incorporated as a city in 1958 with a population of just over 3,000 residents; at the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 15,921 and in 2020 the p ...

, after Fort Nashborough was built at the current site of Nashville. Because of the danger from the Indian wars, Mansker and the people living there abandoned the station and moved to Fort Nashborough in 1781. Two men who returned for possessions the next day were killed, and the original fort was burned down. However, Mansker returned to the area in 1783 and built a bigger fort about one mile from the original site where he lived with his wife Elizabeth. Because it was able to accommodate more men, the larger fort was easier to defend against attack. A number of notable travelers boarded at the station from 1780 to the early 1790s. These included Captain William Bowen, General Daniel Smith, Isaac Bledsoe,

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...

, John Overton and French botanist André Michaux.

References

{{coord missing, Tennessee Bledsoe's Fort Pre-statehood history of Tennessee