Jefferson County, Tennessee: History
Jefferson County was established on June 11, 1792, by William Blount, Governor of the Southwest Territory. It had been a part of Caswell County during the State of Franklin period (1784–1789). Its county seat, Dandridge, was settled in 1783.
On the eve of the Civil War, Jefferson County, like most other counties in mountainous East Tennessee, was opposed to secession. In Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession referendum on June 8, 1861, Jefferson County voters rejected secession by a margin of 1,987 to 603. A railroad bridge at Strawberry Plains was among those targeted by the East Tennessee bridge-burning conspiracy in November 1861. This led to internal conflict in the area throughout the war, with men from the county enlisting in both of the rival armies.
On October 2, 2013, on I-40 in Jefferson County near the I-40 and I-81 split, a multi-vehicle collision involving a church bus, a tractor-trailer, and a SUV occurred at mile marker 423. Tennessee Highway Patrol officials discovered that the church bus had blown a tire, leading it to merge into oncoming traffic, clipping the SUV and colliding with the semi-truck, causing it to burst into flames. The accident resulted in 8 fatalities and 14 injuries.
In 2013, Jefferson County officials explored developing an 1,800-acre megasite north of the I-81/I-40 junction outside of Dandridge to attract major manufacturers to locate to the county, following the successful efforts in Chattanooga with a Volkswagen assembly plant and in Smyrna with a Nissan assembly plant. The project was later cancelled following an organized opposition group by local farmers and the lack of financial support from federal and Tennessee state government agencies.