Frog Jump, Tennessee — The Story Behind Crockett County's Best-Known Place Name

Frog Jump is an unincorporated Crockett County community with one of West Tennessee's more memorable place names, and a legend to match it. The area sits on a long, narrow strip of land between the South Fork of the Forked Deer River to the west and Black Creek to the east — and local tradition holds that a frog could leap the entire distance between the two waterways in a single bound.

The earliest known printed reference to the name appears in an 1874 issue of the Crockett County Sentinel, describing a community social event. From early on, Frog Jump was really two linked communities rather than one, known locally as Upper Frog Jump and Lower Frog Jump.

The area's roots run deep in agriculture. When the Tennessee Department of Agriculture launched its Century Farms program in 1976 to recognize farms that had stayed in the same family for a century or more, it identified eleven such farms tied to this part of the county. The oldest was Frog Jump Farm, established in 1830 by Dr. Samuel Oldham Sr. on fifteen hundred acres.