Pinson is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Madison County,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

. It lies along

U.S. Route 45 U.S. Route 45 (US 45) is a major north-south United States highway and a border-to-border route, from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. A sign at the highway's northern terminus notes the total distance as . US 45 is notable for incorporati ...

between

Jackson Jackson may refer to: Places Australia * Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region * Jackson North, Queensland, a locality in the Maranoa Region * Jackson South, Queensland, a locality in the Maranoa Region * Jackson oil field in Durham, ...

and

Henderson Henderson may refer to: People *Henderson (surname), description of the surname, and a list of people with the surname * Clan Henderson, a Scottish clan Places Argentina *Henderson, Buenos Aires Australia *Henderson, Western Australia Canada *H ...

, just north of the

Chester County Chester County may refer to: * Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States ** Chester County Council, boy scout council in Pennsylvania. * Chester County, South Carolina, United States * Chester County, Tennessee, United States * Cheshire ...

line, and State Route 197 also passes through the community. It is included in the

Jackson, Tennessee Jackson is a city in and the county seat of Madison County, Tennessee, United States. Located east of Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis and 130 Miles Southwest of Nashville, it is a regional center of trade for West Tennessee. Its total population wa ...

Metropolitan Statistical Area. Pinson is the site of the Pinson Mounds, the largest

Middle Woodland period In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BC to European contact i ...

Indian mound Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that in ...

group in the United States, and the Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park dedicated to their study.

Demographics

History

In 1820, a group of five surveyors including Joel Pinson and Memucan Hunt Howard discovered a

platform mound A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. It typically refers to a flat-topped mound, whose sides may be pyramidal. In Eastern North America The indigenous peoples of North America built substru ...

in the Pinson area while surveying land grants for Colonel Thomas Henderson. The surveyors dubbed the mound Mount Pinson after Joel, and a post office was established there under that name in 1827. In 1866, the post office was renamed "Pinson" with the foundation of the town of Pinson near the site of the mounds on land originally belonging to A. S. Rogers. Pinson High School was established in the area in 1873, and by 1875 had a student body of nearly 150 scholars.

Country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

singer

Eddy Arnold Richard Edward Arnold (May 15, 1918 – May 8, 2008) was an American country music singer. He was a Nashville sound (country/popular music) innovator of the late 1950s, and scored 147 songs on the ''Billboard'' country music charts, second onl ...

attended the school and performed locally during his early years. The institution endured until it was consolidated into South Side High School with several other area schools in 1956. A destructive tornado struck Pinson on March 11, 1923, destroying 50 homes and killing at least 18 people. It has since been estimated that the tornado was an F5 on the

Fujita scale The Fujita scale (F-Scale; ), or Fujita–Pearson scale (FPP scale), is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based primarily on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is determ ...

based on damage reports.

Pinson Mounds

Pinson is the site of the Pinson Mounds, an extensive archaeological area including three distinct mound groups of the

. Covering , the area contains at least 30 mounds, 17 of which have been identified as being completely or partially constructed by prehistoric peoples.Mark Norton, "The Pinson Mounds Complex," ''West Tennessee Historical Society Papers'' 55 (2001). Copy obtained at Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park. They are located on an upland above the banks of the South Fork of the

Forked Deer River The Forked Deer River system is the main drainage of the central portion of West Tennessee. Locals pronounce the first word of the river's name with two syllables, as in “Forkéd” (). The Forked Deer consists of various streams designated ...

, and are thought to have been originally constructed for religious ceremonial purposes. The mounds were discovered by surveyor Joel Pinson in 1820 but remained of only local interest until Smithsonian archaeologist William Edward Myer mapped the site in the 1880s. It was officially made a Tennessee state park in 1974 after local citizens petitioned the state to purchase and preserve the land. The park, officially the Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park, spans and is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

Notable people

country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

singer that attended Pinson High School

References

{{Authority control Unincorporated communities in Madison County, Tennessee Unincorporated communities in Tennessee Jackson metropolitan area, Tennessee