William King, the wealthy owner of the Virginia Saltworks, built the Boat Yard in 1802 on the first lots sold in the new town of Christianville.
Christianville extended along the banks of the North Fork of the Holston River from Reedy Creek to just beyond Netherland Inn. King’s agents built wharfs, warehouses, a storehouse, a boarding house, and dwellings.
It was a thriving flatboat freighting agency, shipping large cargoes of salt, iron, and other commodities downriver of the Tennessee-Mississippi river systems.
