David Crockett lived in Lawrence County for four years. He came here as an anonymous, semi-literate backwoodsman when the area had only recently been opened to white settlement by the Chickasaw Cession of 1816. 

While here, Crockett was elected a justice of the peace, colonel of the county’s militia regiment, and state representative. He also served as one of the first commissioners of Lawrenceburg, when that body was appointed the task of selecting a site for the county seat. He set up an extensive grist mill, powder mill, and distillery operation at Crockett Falls on Shoal Creek, just west of Lawrenceburg. 

But when a flood of Shoal Creek destroyed his mill and distillery operation in 1821, Crockett sold out, paid his creditors, and moved to West Tennessee, where his reputation in politics as “the poor man’s friend” earned him a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1827.

After moving west, Crockett’s extant records don’t mention Lawrence County much. Indeed, we can’t be sure of the date of his last visit to Lawrence County–if, indeed, he ever returned again. But we can be assured that the area was still very much on his mind, even when he made it to halls of Congress.

On January 17, 1828, Crockett proposed a resolution in Congress that, if successful, would have altered the course of Lawrence County’s history. He wanted the Army to build a Federal Armory on par with those in Springfield, Massachusetts or Harper’s Ferry, Virginia on either Buffalo River or Shoal Creek in Lawrence County.

The text of his resolution read:

“Resolved, That the committee on Military affairs be instructed to inquire into the expediency of authorizing the Secretary of War to appoint one or more skillful Engineers to examine several points on Big Shoal Creek, and Big Buffaloe, in Lawrence county, in Tennessee, and to report upon the fitness of these places respectively as a site for a National Armory, similar to the Armories of the United States at Springfield and Harpers ferry.”

According to an article from the Jackson, Tennessee ‘Gazette,’ Crockett extolled the virtues of Lawrence County as the site of a Federal Armory by saying it “was situated not more than 30 or 40 miles from the Muscle Shoals and there was no place in the West which combined greater advantages.”

However, not to be outdone, Crockett’s resolution was amended by Gabriel Moore, a new representative from Huntsville, Alabama, to include the words “and the Cypress Shoal Creek, in Lauderdale County, in Alabama.” Moore made the argument that this location was “preferable to the site offered by the gentleman from Tennessee” because it was actually at the location of the Muscle Shoals, instead of 30 or 40 miles away from it.

The resolution was then further amended by a representative from Kentucky who wanted an Armory built in his state. 

The ‘Gazette’ article mentions that Crockett “accepted the amendment as a modification of his resolution.”

In the end, a Federal Armory was never built either in Lawrence County nor in Lauderdale County, Alabama. Although we can’t say exactly why neither location was chosen by the Army, it is fascinating to imagine how the presence of an operation as extensive as the Federal Arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts would have impacted our county. 

In addition to the economic and population boost such an operation might have provided the area, it would almost certainly have been seized by Confederate forces at the outset of the Civil War, and might have made Lawrence County an area of more strategic importance during the war. 

Crockett eventually fell out with fellow-Tennesseans James K. Polk and then-President Andrew Jackson over a variety of issues (including Indian removal, which Crockett opposed) and lost his congressional seat to a Jackson loyalist. He famously left Tennessee and continued west to revolutionary Texas, where he died defending the Alamo in 1836.

In a twist of fate, Crockett eventually did add to Lawrence County’s economic prosperity when the acreage surrounding his onetime mill operation was declared a state park in 1959. 

With more than 1,300 acres, a 40-acre lake, and over 100 campsites, David Crockett State Park is a vital part of our local economy, and, according to the park’s strategic management plan, it brought more than half-a-million visitors to Lawrence County in 2022.