A recreation area and mountain lake in the Cherokee National Forest off the lower TN Skyway — and a name that marks an old line between two worlds.
Down on the Tennessee end, off the lower Skyway, there's a pretty mountain lake and campground with a name worth pausing on: Indian Boundary. It's a lovely spot — a calm lake ringed by forest, a loop trail, a place to swim or paddle or camp under the mountains. But that name is a history lesson all by itself.
An 'Indian boundary' was exactly what it sounds like: a surveyed line, drawn by treaty, marking where the United States ended and Cherokee country began. This area sat right on one of those lines. On one side, you were in the young American nation; step across, and you were in a sovereign Cherokee homeland that had been lived in for thousands of years. Those lines got drawn, and then moved, and then moved again — always in the same direction, always taking more — until there was no Cherokee side left at all on the map. That's the story of nearly every 'boundary' name in these mountains.
So enjoy the lake for the gentle place it is today. But when you read that sign, hear what it's telling you: you are driving across ground that was a border between nations, and the way that border kept moving is the whole sad arithmetic of what happened here. Boone will walk you deeper into it up the road.
Photo: United States. Forest Service. Southern Region · Public domain
