PORT ROYAL STATE PARK RECEIVES OFFICIAL TRAIL OF TEARS DESIGNATION FROM THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Nashville, Tenn. – Port Royal State Park in Montgomery County, Tenn., has received designation from the National Park Service as an official site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. The Trail of Tears commemorates the forced removal of Native Americans from their homelands in the Southeastern United States and the paths they traveled westward in the 1830s.
Aaron Mahr, National Park Service Historian for the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, will present a certificate denoting the official designation to Park Manager Bob Wells at Port Royal State Park at 10:00 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, September 19, 2006.
Port Royal is the site of one of Tennessee’s earliest communities and trading centers and was a major point along the main route taken by the Cherokee traveling from Nashville to the Ohio River. Diary records of the removal mentioned Port Royal, the last stop before leaving Tennessee, as an encampment site where the Cherokee stayed overnight or longer to re-supply, grind corn and rest.
Both water and land routes crossing nine states comprise the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, established by the U.S. Congress in 1987 to acknowledge the significance of this tragic event in the nation’s history. The National Park Service works with federal agencies, state and local governments, organizations, tribes, and private individuals as partners to administer the national historic trail.
Port Royal State Park becomes the second Tennessee State Park to be named an official site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, joining Red Clay State Historic Park in Bradley County. Other official sites in Tennessee include Audubon Acres, Brainerd Mission Cemetery and the Chattanooga Regional History Museum in Chattanooga and the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn.
For information about the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, contact the National Park Service at (505) 988-6888 or visit the Web site at http://www.nps.gov/trte/.
To learn more about Port Royal and Red Clay State Historic Parks, visit www.tnstateparks.com.
| For more information contact: Dana Coleman
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