Nevertheless, William Bean pursued a career in politics and be elected as a commissioner of the Watauga Association in 1772, serving a crucial role in the absorption of the settlement into the state of North Carolina by 1775.

After surveying the valley below, Bean and Boone descended the southward slope of Clinch Mountain and set camp along the German Creek tributary of the Holston River and the Great Indian Warpath.

[9] During the Revolutionary War, Bean served as a captain for the Virginia militia, and was awarded over 3,000 acres in the German Creek valley where he surveyed and camped at previously with Boone in 1776.

The cabin served as his family's home, and as an inn for prospective settlers, fur traders, and longhunters, named Bean Station, establishing the first reportedly permanent settled community in present-day Tennessee.

By 1787, Bean's sons constructed a fort, blacksmiths shop, and a trading outpost at the community's crossroads of the Wilderness Road and the Great Indian Warpath.