Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Watauga, TN

Watauga is an incorporated city in northeastern Tennessee whose downtown and most of its territory lie in Carter County, although its municipal boundaries also extend into neighboring Washington County.

Watauga was incorporated in 1960, and its name comes from a Cherokee word meaning 'beautiful river.'

The city sits along the Watauga River at the headwaters of Boone Lake, about 18 river miles above the river's confluence with the South Fork Holston River.

Johnson City lies about five miles southwest of Watauga and Elizabethton about five miles southeast, and the city is part of the Johnson City metropolitan area in the Tri-Cities region.

The community began as Carter's Depot, also called Carter's Station, a stop on the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad in the 1850s where a railroad trestle crossed the Watauga River.

William Bean, traditionally considered Tennessee's first white settler, built his cabin at the mouth of Boone Creek, seven miles downstream from Watauga, in 1769, and the frontier Watauga Association governed from nearby Elizabethton in the 1770s.

During the Civil War, the Watauga trestle was a target of the East Tennessee bridge burnings in November 1861 but proved too heavily guarded to destroy; Union raiders under General Samuel P. Carter finally destroyed it in late December 1862.

A Civil War skirmish was fought at Watauga on October 1, 1864, between Union forces under General Gillem and Confederates under General Vaughn.

The 2020 census counted 353 people in Watauga, living in 135 households, with 161 housing units in the city.

Watauga's population dropped from 458 in the 2010 census to 353 in 2020, its median age in 2020 was 46.7 years, and the Census Bureau classifies all of its residents as rural.