Elkton: The River Town Built on Flatboats

Elkton takes its name from the Elk River, which was once its economic lifeline. The original settlement, called Lower Elkton, sprang up around eighteen oh nine where Richland Creek meets the Elk, but residents later moved upriver to where the town stands today.

For decades Elkton thrived as a flatboat shipping point, sending goods down the Elk and on to the Tennessee River for Giles County and parts of northern Alabama. Those flatboats were reportedly sold for lumber at the end of each voyage and the crew walked home. By the eighteen forties, steamboats reached Elkton too. The town quieted as railroad routes bypassed the river.

Soon after Giles County was organized in November of eighteen oh nine, John and William Price laid out Lower Elkton and sold lots at the mouth of the creek. It became an important shipping point, and considerable business was done there for fifteen or twenty years. Upper Elkton was laid out soon after. Captain Thomas Phillips built the first house in Elkton in the late part of eighteen ten, and Nicholas and Sam Fain ran its first stores. Once flatboat shipping was abandoned, Lower Elkton declined and the line between upper and lower faded. About five hundred forty-five people live here today, and Interstate Sixty-Five passes just east of town.