Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Cosby, TN

Cosby is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Cocke County, Tennessee, on the northeastern fringe of the Great Smoky Mountains.

The Census Bureau designated Cosby a CDP in 2020, and the 2020 census, its first as a CDP, counted 807 people.

In the 2000 census, the ZIP Code Tabulation Area for ZIP code 37722, which covers Cosby and a large surrounding rural area rather than the CDP alone, counted 5,201 people and 2,091 households.

Cosby lends its name to the northeastern section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which forms the community's southern boundary, and the Cosby Campground area serves as the park's Cocke County entrance.

For much of the first half of the 20th century, Cosby was known across East Tennessee as 'The Moonshine Capital of the World.'

During World War II, workers at the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge bought Cosby moonshine, and local moonshiners kept their stills supplied by taking advantage of a government sugar supplement meant for beekeepers, according to Appalachian historian Wilma Dykeman.

Cosby moonshiners warned one another of approaching revenue agents by setting off dynamite blasts in the mountains.

The community spreads along the narrow Cosby Creek valley from Allen Grove in the north to the national park border in the south, is traditionally divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper Cosby, and is framed by English Mountain to the northwest and Green Mountain to the east.

U.S. Route 321 is Cosby's main road, linking it to Newport about 10 miles north and Gatlinburg about 20 miles west, and the easternmost segment of the Foothills Parkway meets the highway in Cosby.

Samuel Odell was probably the first settler in the Cosby Creek valley, and William Whitson built Whitson's Fort near the mouth of Cosby Creek after Cherokee raids in which Vinet Fine was killed in 1783.