Tasso, Bradley County, Tennessee: Road References and Place Names

Tasso, Tennessee

Road References and Place Names

References, Random, Selected

These are notes and references salvaged from a Google Map I printed. I was trying to relate old Civil War place name references to modern roads. It seems as though this was part of my Eli Long research, but I can't be sure now. Everything is out of context. Tasso was not part of the route, I don't think, but was one of the place names I was using to get oriented to the Charleston, Tennessee, area, and surrounding communities. Tasso had been mentioned in some unrelated Civil War episode; that is, an episode not directly related to my Eli Long research--just related by War events occurring in a certain region at a certain time.

Tasso, Bradley County, Tennessee

Tasso, a residential community, is part of an area known as Chatata; it was in existence before the Civil War. The place has no numbered highways. It is served by Tasso Lane (connecting Old Highway 11) and Dry Valley Road (connecting Charleston). Other major roads: Old Charleston Road, Urbane Road, Jenkins Road.

Civil War Reference:

Spring 1864: A Confederate train (reportedly) chased a Union train near Tasso.

Wiki source for Tasso Train Chase: 

Bradley County Tennessee Lost Confederate Payroll
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/civil-war/155765-bradley-county-tenn-lost-confederate-payroll.html

--via Treasurenet.com (accessed 27 Dec. 2009; retrieved 23 April 2014).

My note says that Tasso is not relevant to the following route, that Tasso is on the road just east of Cleveland, Tennessee. The following route would be well west of Tasso.

Route from Charleston, Tennessee, to 798 Coffey Church Road, Crandall, Georgia (place names selected simply to force the route to display on a modern map):

Google Map of the Area Between Charleston, Tennessee, and Crandall, Georgia
https://goo.gl/maps/b1iRVgR4L8XMDqD4A

My scribbled notes were on a Google Map I printed, showing directions from Charleston, Tennessee, to 798 Coffey Church Road, Crandall, Georgia, with 'stops' on Chatata Valley Road and in Climer, Tennessee (where the Benton Pike crosses the main road). I do know that I only specified these places (used for the directions), to force the map to follow Chatata Valley Road, and I think this whole project was an effort to trace Col. Eli Long's route down through the mountains toward Georgia in early 1864 (probably the Feb. 1864 expedition toward Red Clay, then Dalton). I'm not sure about that, but I know I was tracing a route, and I was using place names from correspondence and reports in O.R. to trace the route and try to relate it to modern-day roads. I also noted elsewhere that a regional map (about 1863-1865 era) shows a relatively smooth, easy road going from Charleston, Tennessee, south to Spring Place, Georgia, but that in reality, that would not be possible. That map shows the road cutting across the top of mountains slantwise; the actual road would have had to be rougher and much curvier, seeking out gaps and easier inclines to cross those mountains. (You can see that road, east of the railroad, curving south/southeast from Charleston, going smoothly across the mountains down toward what today would be Benton Pike, west of Benton).


Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division: Mountain 
Region of NC and Tenn (dtl, Columbus, Tenn. area (small cropped section of a large map)