A short history of Rockford
Rockford is named for a river ford used by early 19th-century settlers and merchants travelling between Knoxville and Maryville. As its name implies, the ford was unusually rocky, and thus preferred by travellers, as large amounts of silt and sand made much of the Little River difficult to cross. The community was called "Rocky Ford" by the early 1800s.
Since the 1900s, the community has been the site of the Rockford Manufacturing Company, a yard cordage factory, and its adjacent and hazardous low head dam, formerly used to power the factory and now poses nothing more than a dangerous feature on the Little River, having been the site of numerous fatalities.
Rockford incorporated as a city in the early 1970s to avoid being annexed by Alcoa or Maryville, both of which were growing rapidly.
Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Rockford, Tennessee, revision 1378584647 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.