Formed on former Native American lands and later farmland, the once bustling communities of Haletown and Guild are products of necessity, as both communities were built to house the thousands of workers who built the
Hales Bar Dam project in the early 1900s. The area in and around Haletown is rich in history from Native Americans like Cherokee war chief Dragging Canoe, who in the decade preceding his death in 1792, lived nearby at Running Water (Cherokee: ᎠᎼᎦᏳᎾᏱ, romanized: Amogayunayi), a Chickamauga town (now known as the community of
Whiteside, Tennessee). Nearby
Nickajack Cave was mined for
saltpeter beginning in 1800 throughout the
War of 1812 and again throughout the
American Civil War before being eventually closed and flooded with the waters of Nickajack Lake. The Guild community was named for Josephus Conn Guild, Sr., a prominent engineer who led construction of the dam until his death in 1907. The dam powerhouse, designed by
John Bogart in the Classical Revival style, was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 2008. Haletown's name was derived from a geographically noted sand bar along the river (Hale's Bar) which was named after the Hale family who owned farmland and lived close by to the area. There's still descendants of the original Hale family who live in the Sequatchie Valley to this day. Hale's Bar Dam inherited its name in the same manner. The community was thriving for many years during the construction of Hales Bar Dam and in the years that followed, with several community schools operating in the area including a school for children of color, along with two post office locations (Guild and Haletown), several churches and some small stores and businesses. The dam was purchased by the
Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s, as it was established to have overall authority for flood control and power generation in the Tennessee Valley. It operated the dam into the 1960s, although it was not able to correct problems of leaks even after extensive renovations in the 1940s. The TVA replaced it with
Nickajack Dam, built slightly downstream. After that the TVA partially demolished the Hales Bar Dam. The powerhouse is now used as a private event space and is open for tours. A marina has also been developed there. Following TVA's renovations to the dam in the 1940s, workers moved on to other projects, and Guild became largely deserted. The post office was moved to Haletown. Guild Elementary School, which was the last remaining school in the community and part of the local Marion County public school system, closed in the early 1970s with students then being bused to nearby Jasper Elementary School in
Jasper, Tennessee instead. The Guild
post office, which opened on August 11, 1906, is now located in Haletown; its
ZIP code is 37340. Being along a major route east to west and eventually by highway, a crossing at the Tennessee River was a necessity. Rankin's Ferry on the Tennessee River between Guild and Shellmound, Tennessee operated here well into the late 1920s. This old river
ferry was replaced in the early 1930s with the completion of the
Marion Memorial Bridge (or Veteran's Memorial / U.S. Highway 41 bridge) between this point and Hale's Bar. The old ferry landing was inundated by Nickajack Lake (reservoir) after the completion of the TVA's Nickajack Dam in the 1960s. The former
Marion Memorial Bridge (also known as the Marion Veteran's Memorial Bridge or Haletown Bridge) carried
U.S. Highway 41,
U.S. Highway 64, and
U.S. Highway 72 over the
Tennessee River at Haletown, but lost most of its traffic to the nearby
Interstate 24 bridge after its completion and the opening of I-24 between Nashville and Chattanooga in the early 1970s. Despite being on the National Register of Historic Places, the iconic metal truss bridge was permanently closed on January 9, 2012, and replaced with a modern, wider, and more driver-friendly steel girder bridge which opened in November 2014, just to the side of its predecessor. The former truss bridge was demolished in 2015. It was removed from the National Register of Historic Places following its demolition in 2016. While the new bridge is not as iconic as the former, it's much safer and allows easier access when I-24 is backed-up and traffic must use it to detour and cross the new bridge. It is assumed that the new bridge has adopted the "Marion Memorial Bridge" name designation as many now refer to it the same, however it's unclear if that has ever been made official as no signs or markers are present to indicate such.
Tennessee State Route 134 connects the three U.S. Highways to I-24 at Haletown. ==Geography==