The recent discovery here of the oldest pottery shards found in the southeastern U.S., attests to the fact that the Hohenwald area has been attracting people for millennia. The Natchez Trace, which runs though the eastern portion of the county is one of the four oldest trails in North America. Many early Americans traveled on the Trace, including Andrew Jackson who stayed at the McClish Indian reservation here and whose troops from the Battle of New Orleans were discharged here.
The most notable early American to travel the Trace may have been Meriwether Lewis, Captain of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who died here under circumstances that read like a great murder mystery. The monument over his grave became one of the first National Monuments in the South. The county at first was at the edge of American civilization, and formed a boundary with the Choctaw Nation. Soon several waves of German immigrants moved into the area. One such group created Hohenwald, which in German means “High Forest.”
