Rocky Mount Historic Site

William Cobb arrived on the western frontier of North Carolina in 1769, and the home he built there became something no settler could have planned for: the first capitol of the Southwest Territory, where Governor William Blount conducted the business of a new nation from 1790 to 1792. The site in Piney Flats, Tennessee, is now a National Historic Landmark, and tours run it as living history — interpreters holding the year at 1791, the government still in session.