A few minutes south of Cleveland, just north of the Tennessee–Georgia line, Red Clay State Historic Park preserves the site of the last seat of the Cherokee Nation east of the Mississippi. From 1832 until the Trail of Tears in 1838, the General Council of the Cherokee Nation met under brush arbours by a blue limestone spring here, having been forced out of their previous capital at New Echota by Georgia state law.
The park has a small but excellent interpretive centre with displays on Cherokee government, the legal struggle against removal, and the forced march itself; outside, a series of reconstructed council houses, a sleeping hut and a farmhouse mark the meeting ground. A short trail leads down to the Blue Hole spring that gave the council its water. The site is sober and quietly powerful and almost never crowded.
The state of Georgia operates a paired site at New Echota, an hour to the south.