Cookeville: A County Seat, Twice

Putnam County had to be created twice. The Tennessee General Assembly established it in eighteen forty-two from portions of four surrounding counties, but a court ruling in eighteen forty-five dissolved it. In eighteen fifty-four the legislature tried again, and this time it held.

The new county seat was named for Richard F. Cooke, whose persistent lobbying had been crucial to both attempts at county creation. Land for the courthouse square was purchased from Charles Crook that same year.

Cookeville spent its first decades as an isolated plateau town on the Cumberland Plateau, thirty-six miles from the nearest railroad. When the Nashville and Knoxville Railroad finally arrived in eighteen ninety, the county's population began to grow rapidly. Tennessee Technological University arrived in nineteen fifteen, reshaping the town into a regional education center.

Today Cookeville is one of the faster-growing mid-sized cities in Tennessee, its two-time founding a small footnote to a place that ended up lasting. Charles Crook's land was chosen partly because it had natural springs that could support a town. The Tennessee Central Railway built the depot that still stands on West Broad Street in nineteen oh nine, and it carried passengers until nineteen fifty-five.

It is now a museum with a Baldwin steam locomotive, engine number five oh nine, built in nineteen thirteen. The university's roots go back to Dixie College, founded in nineteen oh nine by local religious leaders. It became Tennessee Technological University in nineteen sixty-five.