Clarksville Tennessee is one of those cities that have an incredible history in our country. The historic downtown area is a vision of small town Americana, but set within a bustling city. There isn’t a single phase of U.S. history that didn’t involve Clarksville in one form or another and the residents have taken great pride in preserving much of the story for generations to come. The sports scoreboards of history show a literal who’s who of famous sports figures that have all come from Clarksville. In this town, baseball reigns supreme.
The lands that are now part of Clarksville have been archeologically dated to habitation by Native Americans to over 11,000 years ago. While there are many tribes that have lived in the area, the most recent and notable are the Muscogee and later the Cherokee, Chicasaw and Choctaw. When the Spanish explorers arrived they brought with them European diseases that the local tribes could not combat and many of the native people died and relocated to escape the disaster. The influx of European settlers to the area created the need to displace the Cherokee people and a plan was designed to forcibly relocate 17,000 people of the Cherokee nation to another state, with lesser land quality. This was known as the Trail of Tears. Cherokee women. men and children walked from Georgia to Oklahoma, and over 4,000 of the tribe died along the way.
