Long ago the rough settlement of Pinhook sat near this spot, preceding the formal founding of Memphis in 1819. Before John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson surveyed and platted the city, this bluff above the Mississippi was already home to a collection of flatboat men, traders, and frontier settlers clustered around a landing. The settlement was called Pinhook — a term that referred to a small-time speculator or dealer, which may have been a commentary on the character of its inhabitants.
It was a wild place, as most river settlements were: a transient economy of goods and men in motion, fueled by the river and bounded by almost no law. When the formal city was established on May 22, 1819, it was named Memphis after the ancient Egyptian city on the Nile — the founders had in mind a city of similar commercial importance at a comparable river crossing. The analogy proved apt.
Within a generation, Memphis was one of the great commercial cities of the American interior. But it started here, on this bluff, as a collection of shacks and a mud landing — which is how most great cities begin.