We invite you to visit the Historic Ramsey House’s permanent exhibit, A Community Born of Water and Stone, and learn about the rich history of the Fork of the River area in east Knox County. The exhibit introduces the neighbors of the Ramsey family, and includes stories of the Cherokee, the enslaved persons, and other families who settled in the Fork. The exhibit is located in the Maxwell Doak Ramsey Memorial Gallery in the Event Center.
The Fork is a historic wedge of fertile land with limestone seams between the French Broad and Holston Rivers. It encompasses the entire area in Knox County between these two rivers all the way to the Jefferson and Sevier County lines. In a symbolic sense, water and stone – one fluid and self-leveling, the other hard and unyielding – correspond to the forces and obstacles that shaped the Fork and its people from the 1700s, through the Civil War, and into the 1900s
