Fort Adams / Fort Pike

Fort Adams / Fort Pike is a Tennessee historical marker in Shelby County.

Shelby Co, Memphis, at Auction Park

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With Chickasaw approval, Army Captain Isaac Guion erected the United States' first garrison in the mid-Mississippi Valley here in October of 1797. Initially named Fort Adams for the second U.S. President, the stockade was later called Fort Pike, because Adams' name was transferred to a larger fort at Natchez, Mississippi. Fort Pike was vacated in 1798, when Fort Pickering was constructed on a higher part of the bluff.

TodayHistorical map

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

Historical maps covering this location

1802 · United States 2. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1829 · Tennessee (A. Finley, 1829) (Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1835 · Chickasaw Cession, Mississippi (1835) (Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1836 · Arkansas. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1901 · Memphis. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

Example

For example, one family's tree showed the Articles of Confederation marker in Pennsylvania standing under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s.

What that marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years there.

From one family's 77-marker roster

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Marker text and location from the Tennessee Historical Commission, as the Commission publishes them on its marker map.

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