The Long Island of the Holston River was an important site for the Cherokee and their ancestors, as this had been part of their homelands for thousands of years.

Daniel Boone, in 1775, began from the Long Island to clear the Wilderness Road, which extended through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.

That year Colonel John Martin was appointed as the US Indian Agent and established a trading post on Long Island.

[1] The island became a jumping off point for settlers going west by the rivers, including to middle Tennessee and what was developed as Cumberland County.

Migrants would reach this area by overland travel, then build flatboats or barges to continue west by water, down the Tennessee River.

Such boat-building stimulated the development of the community of Christianville, on the north bank of the Holston and the western end of Long Island.

[1] On January 7, 1806 Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War to President Thomas Jefferson, purchased the island from the Cherokee people on behalf of the United States.

[3] In 1822 the European-American settlements near here, Christianville and Rossville, were chartered together as the Town of Kingsport; it developed as an important regional shipping port on the Holston River in the early 19th century.

[1] Goods brought in from the surrounding countryside were loaded onto barges for transport downstream to the Holston's confluence with the Tennessee River (at Knoxville), from where they were shipped to other markets.

[4] In 1960 Long Island of the Holston was declared a National Historic Landmark District because of its significance in indigenous and United States history.