Born on a Riverbank, Not a Mountaintop RoadyGoat
1786The famous song says Davy Crockett was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, but the real spot is right here, in a quiet river valley on the banks of the Nolichucky. David Crockett was born on August 17th, 1786, the fifth of nine children of John and Rebecca Crockett, a struggling frontier family near Limestone in Greene County. There was no coonskin legend yet, just a poor farmer's cabin by the water. The mountaintop line came from a 1955 television ballad that turned a real and complicated frontiersman into a household myth. A replica log cabin at the Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park now marks the place where the story actually started. (Sources: Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park; standard Crockett biographies; True West Magazine.)