24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Townsend, TN

Townsend is a small incorporated city in eastern Blount County, Tennessee, situated in Tuckaleechee Cove along the Little River at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Townsend is one of three gateways to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and bills itself as the "Peaceful Side of the Smokies" and the "Gateway to Cades Cove," with the least traffic of the park's three main entrances.

The city was founded in 1901 and chartered in 1921 by people involved with the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company.

Townsend is named for Colonel Wilson B. Townsend of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who in 1900 purchased 86,000 acres of land along the Little River and the following year incorporated the Little River Lumber Company around whose sawmill the town grew.

In 1926 Colonel Townsend sold 76,000 acres of his Little River Lumber tract at base price to the state for what would become Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The population of Townsend was 550 at the 2020 census, up from 448 at the 2010 census, and the census counted 266 households and 420 housing units in the city.

Townsend's residents were among the oldest in Tennessee at the 2020 census, with a median age of 60.3 years and 37.3 percent of residents aged 65 or older.

Tuckaleechee Cove is a "limestone window" between Bates Mountain and Rich Mountain, and archaeological finds there date Native American occupation of the cove to 2000 B.C.

The Cherokee built a series of villages along the Little River in the cove, which they called Tuckaleechee, from the Cherokee word Tikwalitsi, and a branch of the Great Indian Warpath passed through the site.

Exiled Irish patriot John Mitchel lived and farmed at Townsend with his family for several years in the late 1850s, and a Tennessee Historical Commission marker commemorates him near the junction of U.S. 321 and State Route 73.