Everyone is invited to join in for the annual Trail of Tears Commemorative Walk on Oct. 28 starting at 11:30 a.m. at the Old Cowan Road Park, 203 Wilson St., Winchester.

Walkers will gather at 11:30 a.m. The gathering will be blessed at 11:45 a.m., and walkers will begin the solemn walk of 0.8 miles in the footsteps of the Cherokee who walked the same ground in 1838.

 The trek begins at noon and ends at the Franklin County Library at 105 South Porter St., Winchester, where demonstrations, displays and presentations are part of the day’s exciting events. The archivist for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Bo Taylor, will share stories at 1:30 p.m., and activities continue through 4 p.m. with the library open for extended hours.

About the Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail commemorates the removal of the Cherokee from their ancestral homeland and the paths that 17 Cherokee detachments followed westward.

The Franklin County Historical Society, in partnership with the Tennessee Trail of Tears Association and the National Park Service, installed signage to document the route of the Trail of Tears through Franklin County.

The signs can be found in Monteagle and Sewanee along the Mountain Goat Trail and then to Sherwood Road and to the Templeton Library where the trail descends the mountain. The signs start again at the foot of the mountain through Cowan and Winchester, going around the Square and following Highway 64 before ending on the old David Crockett Highway in Lincoln County.

Nearly 700 Cherokee were taken along this route led by John A. Bell, a Cherokee leader and signer of the Treaty of New Echota. He was appointed by Chief John Ross to lead this detachment.

Bell’s Cherokee detachment began traveling along what is now known as the Bell Route on Oct. 11, 1838, in Charleston, Tennessee, at Fort Cass, an internment camp for native Cherokee, and reached Evansville, Arkansas, on Jan. 7, 1839. More than 20 died along this route.

The route can be confirmed because of vouchers used to pay for supplies along the path of the Bell detachment. The vouchers were made by Lt. Edward Deas and later helped the National Park Service in tracing the route of the detachment.