After considerable work with the Board of the Watauga Academy and Butler Museum, the State of Tennessee honored Old Butler and the Watauga Academy with an historical marker in a beautiful setting just above the new Butler, Tennessee. . .

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Just 20 minutes from Watauga Lake is the Tipton-Haynes Historic Site. It is a beautifully-restored house, outbuildings and property where a significant event in East Tennessee history occurred in 1788.

In addition, look in their cave where early explorers along the Buffalo Tail stayed on their journeys. One of those visitors may have been Daniel Boone . . .

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Floods, wars, bootlegging, Daniel Boone, stunning natural beauty and more! The history of Butler, Tennessee and the Watauga Lake area contains all of these. The events surrounding the settlement and transformation of the area are the subjects of Herman Tester's new book, "Butler; Old, New and Carderview". . .

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The Watauga and Elk River valleys have been the scenes of many floods. The last major one, 1940, started the process which led to the building of the TVA Watauga Dam and the creation of Watauga Lake.

Before there was a Watauga Dam and Watauga Lake there were communities, families and individuals living on land now under the lake. Learn about the story of these people and their sacrifice of the community of Butler (now know as Old Butler). Get a feel for the community life of Old Butler in this wonderful museum in "new" Butler Tennessee. . . .

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After years as Smith's Mill, the town was renamed Butler, Tennessee after Colonel Roderick Butler of Mountain City.

Roderick Butler was a commander in the 13th Volunteer Cavalry. Learn about his life, see his beautiful home now fully restored in Mountain City, Tennessee and visit the graveyard where he and his family are buried. . . .

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"The town that wouldn't drown"? That is Butler, Tennessee. Today's "new" Butler Tennessee was created when the TVA decided to take steps to improve flood control in the Watauga River and Roan Creek Valleys of far Eastern Tennessee by building the Watauga Dam and creating the Watauga Lake. Unfortunately the town of Butler, now known as Old Butler, was sacrificed for this project..

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"Established near the Shoals in 1772, the Watauga Association was for all practical purposes independent of the British Crown ~ more than 4 years before the Declaration of Independence. When the settlers, who thought they had settled in Virginia, learned they were living under the authority of the royal government of North Carolina and beyond the Indian Treaty Line, they formed their own government. . ."

    ~ State Historic Marker at Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area

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