In 1820, a group of five surveyors including Joel Pinson and Memucan Hunt Howard discovered a Middle Woodland periodplatform mound in the Pinson area while surveying land grants for Colonel Thomas Henderson. The surveyors dubbed the mound Mount Pinson after Joel,[7] and a post office was established there under that name in 1827.[8] In 1866, the post office was renamed "Pinson" with the foundation of the town of Pinson near the site of the mounds on land originally belonging to A. S. Rogers.[7][9]
Pinson High School was established in the area in 1873, and by 1875 had a student body of nearly 150 scholars.[10]Country music singer Eddy Arnold attended the school and performed locally during his early years.[11] The institution endured until it was consolidated into South Side High School with several other area schools in 1956.[12]
A destructive tornado struck Pinson on March 11, 1923, destroying 50 homes and killing at least 18 people.[13] It has since been estimated that the tornado was an F5 on the Fujita scale based on damage reports.[14][15]
Pinson is the site of the Pinson Mounds, an extensive archaeological area including three distinct mound groups of the Middle Woodland period.[16] Covering 400 acres (1.6 km2), the area contains at least 30 mounds, 17 of which have been identified as being completely or partially constructed by prehistoric peoples.[17] They are located on an upland above the banks of the South Fork of the Forked Deer River, and are thought to have been originally constructed for religious ceremonial purposes.[18]
The mounds were discovered by surveyor Joel Pinson in 1820 but remained of only local interest until Smithsonian archaeologist William Edward Myer mapped the site in the 1880s.[16] It was officially made a Tennessee state park in 1974 after local citizens petitioned the state to purchase and preserve the land.[19] The park, officially the Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park, spans 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[20]
^Mark Norton, "The Pinson Mounds Complex," West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 55 (2001). Copy obtained at Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park.
^Dean R. Snow, Archaeology of Native North America (2010), p. 93.
