Sequatchie Valley Tennessee encompasses communities in Marion County whose history includes early Native American settlements, the Cherokee Removal, Civil War activity, and the growth of mining and railroad industries. Jasper was formed in 1820 on land donated by Betsy Pack, daughter of Cherokee Chief John Lowery, and lies along the historic Dixie Hwy (US 41), a critical Civil War supply route, while preserving one of the oldest Sequatchie Valley Line railroad depots. South Pittsburg, on the Tennessee River, shares this history and has been home to Lodge Manufacturing since 1890. New Hope stands near the former South Pittsburg ferry and the Cherokee town of Nickajack Cave, and also became the site of the Shrine of Our Lady Virgin of the Poor, built in 1982 by Benedictine monks as a replica of a shrine in Belgium. Whitwell began as a coal mining town, suffered a mine explosion in December 1981 that killed 13 men, and preserves the memory of miners at the Coal Miners Museum, while Whitwell Middle School houses the Children's Holocaust Memorial and Paper Clip Project. Orme was rooted in coal mining and lay along a branch line of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis Railway until mining ended after a miner's strike in 1939 and the tracks were removed for WWII efforts. Powells Crossroads developed at a long-used route along Buck Creek that was used for centuries, including during the Cherokee Removal and the Civil War, and formed after World War I when veteran Foster Powell built businesses at the crossroads. Marion County, established in 1817 at the southern end of the Sequatchie Valley and Tennessee's south Cumberland region, was later settled by pioneers and shaped by railroad infrastructure and mining, with the Tennessee River crossing its southern end and the county bordered by sections of South Cumberland State Park and other park systems.