Rocky Mount Historic Site preserves the farmstead and dwelling built in the 1770s and 1780s by William Cobb, one of the earliest permanent settlers of the Watauga and Holston River frontier in what is now upper East Tennessee. The property functioned first as a working pioneer farm and family residence, where Cobb, his wife Elizabeth, and their large household raised crops and livestock, kept enslaved workers, and hosted travelers passing through the frontier settlements along the Great Stage Road. Because of its relatively substantial construction and central location, Rocky Mount briefly took on an official government function: from 1790 to 1792 it served as the first capital of the Territory South of the River Ohio, the federal territory that preceded Tennessee statehood. During that period territorial governor William Blount lived and conducted the business of the territorial government from the house, using its rooms as offices, meeting space, and lodging in the absence of any purpose-built capitol. After the capital relocated to Knoxville in 1792, Rocky Mount reverted to use as the Cobb family's private home and farm for several more generations. The property passed out of the family in the twentieth century and was ultimately preserved as a museum; since 1962 it has been owned by the State of Tennessee and operated by the Rocky Mount Historical Association as a living-history site, with costumed interpreters recreating domestic, agricultural, and governmental life on the frontier as it would have appeared around 1791, and the Cobb family cemetery preserved on the grounds.