Cumberland River

Cumberland River

Important first as a passage for hunters and settlers, the Cumberland River also supported later riverboat trade which reached to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Villages, towns and cities were located at landing points along its banks. Through the middle of the 19th century, settlers depended on rivers for trading and travel.

In 1748, Dr. Thomas Walker led a party of hunters across the Appalachian Mountains from Virginia. Walker, a Virginian, was an explorer and surveyor of renown. He gave the name "Cumberland" to the lofty range of mountains his party crossed, in honor of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland whose name had become popular in America after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.[2] Walker's party pursued their journey by way of the Cumberland Gap into what is today Kentucky. Finding a beautiful mountain stream flowing across their course they called it the "Cumberland River." Walker's journal entry for April 17, 1750, reads in part: "I went down the creek a-hunting, and found that it went into a river about a mile below our camp. This, which is Flat Creek and some other join'd, I called Cumberland River."

Previous to Walker's trip, the Cumberland River had been called Warioto by Native Americans and Shauvanon by French traders. The river was also known as the Shawnee River (or Shawanoe River) for years after Walker's trip.