Wasp, Tennessee
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Wasp was a community located in Cocke County, in the U.S. state of
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
. Situated in the upper Wolf Creek Valley in the rugged eastern part of the county, Wasp thrived as an
Appalachia Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...
n agrarian community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1930s, the
United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...
purchased Wasp and its surrounding homesteads as part of an initiative to restore the Wolf Creek watershed (which had been logged), and the community was abandoned. Today, the ruins of Wasp have been designated a "Historically Significant" area, and are maintained by the
Cherokee National Forest The Cherokee National Forest is a United States National Forest located in the U.S. states of Tennessee and North Carolina that was created on June 14, 1920. The forest is maintained and managed by the United States Forest Service. It encompasses ...
. The ruins of Wasp provide a rare instance of the preservation of a complete early 20th-century Appalachian community's archaeological remains.United States Forest Service
Environment Assessment — Wolf Creek
November 2003, pp. 2, 6, 75. Retrieved: May 31, 2009. Large PDF file.
The remains of Wasp are located at just over above sea level in the western
Bald Mountains The Bald Mountains are a mountain range rising along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeastern United States. They are part of the Blue Ridge Mountain Province of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The Bald Mountain ...
a few miles east of Del Rio. Wolf Creek flows northward through the former community en route to its mouth along the
French Broad River The French Broad River is a river in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee. It flows from near the town of Rosman in Transylvania County, North Carolina, into Tennessee, where its confluence with the Holston River at Knoxville forms ...
near the community of Wolf Creek. A crudely maintained network of forest service roads pass through Wasp, connecting it with
U.S. Route 70 U.S. Route 70 or U.S. Highway 70 (US 70) is an east–west United States highway that runs for from eastern North Carolina to east-central Arizona. It is a major east–west highway of the Southeastern United States, Southeastern, Southern Unite ...
in the French Broad valley to the north and the Round Mountain campground near Lemon Gap to the south. The
Appalachian Trail The Appalachian Trail (also called the A.T.), is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian Tr ...
crosses the summit of Walnut Mountain just south of Wasp, and a spur trail connects the A.T.'s Walnut Mountain shelter with the upper Wolf Creek Valley. Although located just south of the French Broad Valley— which was an oft-used 18th-century migration route— the Wolf Creek area likely remained unsettled until the mid-19th century. After the
U.S. Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states t ...
, railroad companies attempted to complete a line through the French Broad Valley to connect Newport and
Hot Springs A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by circ ...
, but ran into numerous financial and engineering obstacles. By 1870, the Tennessee half of the line reached only to the community of Wolf Creek, where passengers were transferred to a stagecoach that carried them up the valley to Hot Springs. In subsequent years, railroad company employees moved into the Wolf Creek Valley.Rolfe Godshalk (editor), ''Newport'' (Newport, Tennessee: Clifton Club, 1970), pp. 89-90. Wasp was probably established around 1890, and by the early 1900s had its own post office, school, mission house, and
gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the Mill (grinding), grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist i ...
. The U.S. Forest Service began acquiring the upper Wolf Creek Valley in 1935. At present, the deteriorated schoolhouse and mission house remain, along with the cemetery and the ruins of several farmsteads.* 5/4/18. A satellite view of the community of Wasp shows no trace of the ruins of any of the things mentioned here. A ground search shows the area to be heavily logged where the structures were said to be. No foundations, buildings, chimneys or one stone is left upon another of any of the things that were said to be present in this entry.


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External links


Cherokee National Forest
{{Cocke County, Tennessee Geography of Cocke County, Tennessee Ghost towns in Tennessee Cherokee National Forest