Lewis County: Named for a Man Who Died on the Trace

Lewis County, Tennessee, is named for Meriwether Lewis, and that is no coincidence. He died here. In October of eighteen oh nine, three years after returning from his transcontinental expedition with William Clark, Lewis was traveling the Natchez Trace toward Washington when he stopped at a frontier inn called Grinder's Stand. On the night of October eleventh he died of gunshot wounds. Whether he was murdered or took his own life has never been settled.

Tennessee created Lewis County in his honor in eighteen forty-three, and five years later erected a monument over his grave, a broken column atop a stone pyramid symbolizing a life cut short. The federal government designated the site the Meriwether Lewis National Monument in nineteen twenty-five, and it remains part of the Natchez Trace Parkway today. Few stretches of the Trace carry a heavier history.