During the American Revolution, the Cherokee aligned themselves with the British, and launched sporadic attacks against early Euro-American settlers in the Holston valley.

In the waning months of the conflict in 1782, a detachment led by Gen. Charles McDowell of North Carolina crossed the mountains into what is now Tennessee to join up with Col. John Sevier's local forces and initiate an aggressive campaign against the hostile Cherokee.

In August of that year, Sevier crossed the Pigeon at War Ford, attacking and killing several Cherokee camped along the river's banks.

Shortly thereafter, Emanuel Sandusky, a Polish immigrant, established a farm on the land where the Cocke County Memorial Building now stands, and Samuel O'Dell settled at the junction of the Pigeon River and Cosby Creek.

With Sevier's victory at the Battle of Boyds Creek and the ensuing Treaty of Dumplin in 1785, Cherokee influence in the area began to wane.

In the early 19th century, William Faubion, who lived just northeast of New Port, managed to reach New Orleans with a flatboat shipment and return safely.

[19] In early 19th-century East Tennessee, which was riddled with poor roads and hilly terrain, river travel was a relatively convenient mode of transportation.

[20] Among those entertained at Beechwood Hall in the early 19th century was Bishop Francis Asbury, a circuit rider credited with spreading Methodism to the Southern Appalachian region.

Asbury wrote in his journal: We rode through New-Port, the capital of Cocke County, forded French Broad at Shine's Ferry, and came cold and without food for man or beast to John O'Haver's but oh, the kindness of our open-hearted friends.

[22] While New Port had strong religious beginnings, its situation as a river trading hub on the edge of the Appalachian frontier inevitably led to a certain lawlessness.

[25] In the years leading up to the war, Newport's Methodists split into pro-slavery and anti-slavery denominations, reflecting a division common throughout the county.

[27] The residents of Cocke County eventually recruited a home guard to protect them from raids, which they based at the mouth of Indian Camp Creek, a few miles south of New Port.

[29] In 1867, the Cincinnati, Cumberland Gap, and Charleston Railroad constructed a line through Clifton, which was located just south of New Port on the other side of the Pigeon River.

As railroads were quickly replacing flatboats as the preferred mode of transportation and shipping in East Tennessee, the residents of New Port sought to build the new Cocke County Courthouse in Clifton.

To bypass state law, which required an election to move a county seat, New Port decided to simply annex Clifton.

Logging companies eventually turned to the timber-rich forests of Southern Appalachia to keep up with the increasing demand for wood, and band saw mills began spring up in towns located along the base of the mountains.

In 1880, Canadian-born entrepreneur Alexander Arthur (1846–1912), representing the Scottish Carolina Timber and Land Company, arrived in Newport with ambitious plans to log the Pigeon valley.

Arthur's plan called for the construction of a series of dams and booms which would be used to move logs from the higher elevations downstream using the river's current.

All day long, Arthur and his team fought ferociously to secure the dam holding back the company's precious stock of logs.

Historian Wilma Dykeman described that night: Just before daybreak at the depth of the dark and rain, the waiting women and all the rest of the wakefull town heard the great crash as the booms burst, and the cry of the whistle signaled the men's defeat.

Logs from thousands of trees boiled over the broken dams, smashed together in a grinding roar and surged on down the current like giant toothpicks tossed by some elemental energy.

Carson Springs, 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Newport, developed around William Wilson's tavern and stagecoach terminal in the early 19th century.

The establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 brought a still greater influx of tourists to Newport, but nothing like the tourism explosion that occurred in neighboring Sevier County.

After being wounded, Rockwell joined one of the Legion's aviation corps, known as the Lafayette Escadrille, and would become the first American pilot to shoot down an enemy plane in combat.

Thus, to make ends meet, farmers in communities such as Cosby and Del Rio began setting aside some of their corn crop for liquor production.

These early distillers found an easy market in the taverns and saloons of Newport, itself located at a point where the Appalachian highlands meet the Tennessee Valley.

Not only did the county have moonshiners with generations of experience, but the remote Appalachian hollows and thick forest provided perfect hiding places for illegal stills.

[45] The investigation was branched from the FBI Rose Thorn case,[46] which focused upon Cocke County Sheriff officers' corruption, resulting in an earlier 170 arrests on federal and state charges.

Newport is located in western Cocke County and is situated along the Pigeon River in an area where the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains descend into the French Broad drainage basins.

The main section of town, centered around the courthouse, is situated along the south bank of the Pigeon amongst a series of relatively low but steep cliffs.