Dyersburg, Tennessee

Dyersburg is a city and the county seat of Dyer County, Tennessee, in the United States. It is located in northwest Tennessee, 79 miles (127 km) northeast of Memphis on the Forked Deer River. The population was 17,145 at the 2010 census. Dyersburg and Dyer County offer many amenities including quality schools, a low crime rate, moderate climate, low cost of living, and close proximity to area recreation. Dyersburg is a regional retail, medical, employment and cultural center for more than 300,000 people who live in Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri.

History

19th century

The lands that make up Dyer County once belonged to the Chickasaw people. The final treaty by which they relinquished all of West Tennessee was signed in 1818. Dyersburg was a steamboat town with economic growth coming up the Forked Deer River from the Mississippi River.

In 1823 the Tennessee General Assembly passed an act to establish two new counties immediately west of the Tennessee River, Dyer County being one of them. John McIver and Joel H. Dyer donated 60 acres (240,000 m²) for the new county seat, named Dyersburg, at a central location within the county known as "McIver's Bluff". In 1825, Dyer surveyed the town site into 86 lots. The first courthouse was built on the square in 1827. The current Classical Revival-style courthouse, designed by Asa Biggs in 1911, centers a downtown historic district listed in the National Register of Historic Places.