The fort was built by longhunter and Sumner County pioneer Isaac Bledsoe (c. 1735–1793) in the early 1780s to protect Upper Cumberland settlers and migrants from hostile Native American attacks.

Bledsoe's Station was one of a series of frontier outposts built in the Upper Cumberland during the first major migration of Euro-American settlers into the Middle Tennessee area following the American Revolution.

The spring that furnished the minerals for Bledsoe's Lick flows at the base of the hill a few hundred yards east of the fort site.

Bledsoe's Fort Historical Park covers most of the hill between the Sumner County RC Flyers airfield and Rock Springs Road.

The park is roughly halfway between Hartsville to the east and Gallatin to the west and lies approximately 35 miles (56 km) northeast of Nashville.

For thousands of years, the mineral springs at Bledsoe's Lick attracted buffalo and other large animals and subsequently drew Native American hunters to the area.

Expeditions led by Henry Skaggs in 1765 and James Smith in 1766 passed through what is now Sumner County, Tennessee, and hunted extensively in the Upper Cumberland region.

In 1769, an expedition led by Kasper Mansker spent several months in the Upper Cumberland area, eventually sending two canoes full of furs downriver to Natchez, Mississippi.

Isaac Bledsoe also served in the French and Indian War, and following the long hunting excursions of the early 1770s, he joined William Christian's 1776 punitive expedition against the Cherokee.

The Chickamaugas—a renegade branch of the Cherokee—had for the most part been at war with the United States since 1776 and opposed land concessions that would allow Euro-American settlers to move into the Middle Tennessee area permanently.

In 1786, Anthony Bledsoe wrote a letter to North Carolina governor Richard Caswell reporting that 14 settlers had been killed that year and sought permission to attack the Chickamaugas.

[7] As attacks increased, Anthony moved his family from Greenfield to Bledsoe's Station, which afforded better protection, but in 1788 he was shot and mortally wounded when he accidentally stepped into a section of the fort vulnerable to hostile fire.

Guests at Bledsoe's Station in the 1790s included French botanist André Michaux and Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans and later king of France.

In 1807, a pioneer from North Carolina named Jeremiah Belote purchased Bledsoe's Lick, and his descendants retained possession of the property for several decades.