Niota, Tennessee

Niota, tucked into McMinn County along the Hiwassee River plain, holds a quiet distinction: it is the site of the oldest standing railroad depot in Tennessee, built by the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad around eighteen fifty-four. That little brick station survives today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The town was called Mouse Creek until eighteen ninety-seven, when it was renamed Niota, reportedly after a Native American chief in a dime novel.

Niota's other claim to history is political. Harry T. Burn, a young state representative from McMinn County, cast the deciding vote that ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in Nashville on August eighteen, nineteen twenty, giving women across the United States the right to vote.

Burn was twenty-four years old, and he voted yes after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to be a good son and do the right thing.