1816 Cherokee trading post and the official 1838 departure point of the Trail of Tears for thousands of Cherokee — now a riverfront park beside the Tennessee Aquarium.
201 Riverfront Pkwy, Chattanooga, TN 37402
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public riverfront park; Tennessee Aquarium adjacent (paid admission)
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved riverfront walkway, plaza, and Cherokee artistic installations along the Tennessee River; flat ground throughout
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1816 · John Ross trading post (1816) · Official 1838 Trail of Tears departure point · National Register of Historic Places (1974) · Trail of Tears National Historic Trail unit
John Ross (1790-1866), of Cherokee and Scottish descent, established a trading post and ferry on the Tennessee River in 1816 at what was then the northern border of the Cherokee Nation. The site bore his name and served as a commercial and diplomatic hub during the final decades of Cherokee sovereignty in the southeastern United States. Ross sold the trading post in 1826 to Methodist minister Nicholas Dalton Scales and relocated to Georgia, where he served as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 until his death in 1866.
Following the federal government's 1837 takeover of Cherokee lands, the area around Ross's Landing was renamed Chattanooga by American settlers. Ross's Landing was designated as one of the official emigration depots for the forced Cherokee removal. Several thousand Cherokee were staged at camps east of the landing during the spring and summer of 1838.
On June 6, 1838, more than 1,500 Cherokee — the first major group of the water-route removal — departed Ross's Landing in steamboats and barges bound for Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. A final group departed in the fall of 1838, forced to walk overland because the river had fallen too low for navigation. The 'Trail of Tears,' as the removal became known, claimed thousands of Cherokee lives in transit, including Quatie Ross, John Ross's wife.
Ross's Landing was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1974. In 2005 the City of Chattanooga completed a major riverfront redevelopment that created a pedestrian path connecting the landing to the Tennessee Aquarium, featuring Cherokee-designed artistic installations that interpret the removal. The National Park Service maintains the site as part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
Sources
The paranormal lore at Ross's Landing centers on the documented historical trauma of the 1838 Trail of Tears departure. According to US Ghost Adventures' Chattanooga ghost-tour materials, visitors and tour participants report a pervasive sense of unease, cold spots along the adjacent riverwalk, and the apparitions of figures in 19th-century dress that tours describe as Cherokee spirits returning to the place of their forced departure.
Ghost City Tours and other Chattanooga operators incorporate Ross's Landing as a contextual stop on their riverwalk routes. The 1867 Tennessee River flood — which caused fatalities throughout the riverfront area — is sometimes cited as a secondary source of reported activity.
HauntBound flags this site with sensitive:indigenous handling. We document the paranormal reports as reported by tour operators while foregrounding the historical record: thousands of Cherokee were forcibly removed from this site and the surrounding region in 1838, and the Cherokee Nation continues to advocate for accurate, non-romanticized telling of that history. We avoid 'ancient curse' tropes and frame the site as a place of remembrance, not a horror attraction. The Cherokee-designed installations completed in 2005 are the recommended visitor anchor.
Notable Entities
Walk the riverfront plaza, view the Cherokee-designed artistic installations symbolizing the Trail of Tears, and follow the pedestrian path connecting to the Tennessee Aquarium. Interpretive panels recount the 1816 founding and 1838 removal.
Ross's Landing appears as a contextual stop on Chattanooga's riverwalk ghost tours, which treat the site as the foundational trauma anchor for Cherokee-related lore in the city.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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Franklin, TN
Carnton Mansion, built in 1826 in Franklin, Tennessee, served as the largest temporary Confederate field hospital after the November 30, 1864, Battle of Franklin. Roughly 300 wounded soldiers were treated inside the house in a single night, with four Confederate generals' bodies laid out on the back porch the following morning. This record duplicates the canonical Carnton entry.
Franklin, TN
Carnton, built in 1826 in Franklin, Tennessee, served as the largest temporary Confederate field hospital after the November 30, 1864, Battle of Franklin. Approximately 300 wounded soldiers were treated inside the house in a single night, and four Confederate generals' bodies were laid out on the back porch the following morning. Carrie and John McGavock later donated land for the McGavock Confederate Cemetery on the property — the largest privately owned military cemetery in the United States.