Loyston, Tennessee: The Crossroads Town Beneath the Loyston Sea

01A Crossroads Built Around a Foundry

The Tennessee State Museum says the Loyston area was first settled around 1800 by the Stooksbury family. Wikipedia, which names Robert Stooksbury as the settler, says several dozen of his descendants were still living there in the early 1930s, and some ran a general store.

The name came later. According to the museum, John Loy moved to the community in the early 19th century, and by 1866 it was known as Loy's Cross Road. In 1894 it became Loyston. It served as a trading center for local farmers.

The place sat where Mill Creek meets the Clinch River. State Highway 61 crossed a major local road there, and Knoxville was a 30-mile drive away.

02Loyston Before the Dam

The best contemporary description is a 1933 Knoxville News-Sentinel story, quoted in The Tennessee Magazine. It says Loyston had existed for more than 100 years and listed a mill, two stores, two churches, a post office, a grammar school and a high school. Other sources mention only "a school," so the exact schooling is uncertain. The post office's opening and closing dates have not turned up in the research.

Hine's visit in 1933 left a visual record. The Tennessee Encyclopedia notes that his subjects in the Norris Reservoir area included families from Loyston. The National Archives holds Hine photographs captioned Loyston, TN, dated October 1933, including an interior view of Oakdale School near Loyston. A University of Tennessee Volunteer Voices photograph by C. Frykholm, dated 1934, shows the Clinch River above Loyston before TVA cleared the land.

Wikipedia adds that TVA also conducted sociological surveys of Loyston residents. A town of about 70 people was being studied, photographed and mapped for removal while its stores and churches were still open.

03What Happened to Loyston?

The cause was Norris Dam. TVA built it under the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, and the reservoir behind it needed land that included Loyston. WKRN reports that residents were asked to leave, many of them reluctantly, and most were forced out by eminent domain.

The town was emptied and then flooded as Norris Dam was completed in 1936. TN History For Kids cites a Knoxville Journal article dated October 6, 1935, about the flooding of Loyston.

04Where the People Went

Residents did not move as one group. WKRN says families resettled in Knox, Anderson, Blount and Loudon counties. Many others formed a new community in the hills to the south, called New Loyston. TN History For Kids says Loyston "was moved and is now known as New Loyston." That wording is loose. People and some belongings relocated, but the town itself went under the lake.

The name survived on the higher ground. The New Loyston Cemetery lies in Union County, about three miles from the old townsite.

05What Remains of Loyston Today

Abandoned Loyston is now a section of Norris Lake in Union County, along the shores of Big Ridge State Park. The Tennessee State Museum describes the Loyston Sea as a small inlet known for boating and fishing. Anyone visiting the water today is looking at the old town site, though nothing marks it on the surface.

An undated family-history article on the Loy History site, "A Revisit to Old Loyston," describes a bridge to nowhere, steps leading nowhere, a school foundation and the old post office. It also mentions Tennessee road signs still standing on the old highway to Andersonville. Because the article is undated, it is best read as a record of what one visitor found, not a guide to what survives now.

What does survive is the name, in New Loyston and its cemetery, and the photographs Hine and others made in the last years of the town.