East Tennessee is one of the three

Grand Divisions of Tennessee The Grand Divisions are three geographic regions in the U.S. state of Tennessee, each constituting roughly one-third of the state's land area, that are geographically, culturally, legally, and economically distinct. The Grand Divisions are lega ...

defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

. East Tennessee consists of 33 counties, 30 located within the

Eastern Time Zone The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a small por ...

and three counties in the

Central Time Zone The North American Central Time Zone (CT) is a time zone in parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, some Caribbean Islands, and part of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Central Standard Time (CST) is six hours behind Coordinate ...

, namely Bledsoe,

Cumberland Cumberland ( ) is a historic county in the far North West England. It covers part of the Lake District as well as the north Pennines and Solway Firth coast. Cumberland had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974. From 19 ...

, and

Marion Marion may refer to: People *Marion (given name) *Marion (surname) *Marion Silva Fernandes, Brazilian footballer known simply as "Marion" *Marion (singer), Filipino singer-songwriter and pianist Marion Aunor (born 1992) Places Antarctica * Mari ...

. East Tennessee is entirely located within the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...

, although the landforms range from densely forested mountains to broad river valleys. The region contains the major cities of Knoxville and

Chattanooga Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...

, Tennessee's third and fourth largest cities, respectively, and the

Tri-Cities Tri-Cities most often refers to: *Tri-Cities, Tennessee, United States *Tri-Cities, Washington, United States Tri-City, Tricity or Tri-Cities may also refer to: Populated places Americas Canada *Tri-Cities (British Columbia), consisting of Co ...

, the state's sixth largest population center. During the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, many East Tennesseans remained loyal to the

Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

even as the state seceded and joined the Confederacy. Early in the war, Unionist delegates unsuccessfully attempted to split East Tennessee into a separate state that would remain as part of the Union. After the war, a number of industrial operations were established in cities in the region. The

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...

(TVA), created by Congress during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

in the 1930s, spurred economic development and helped to modernize the region's economy and society. The TVA would become the nation's largest public utility provider. Today, the TVA's administrative operations are headquartered in Knoxville, and its power operations are based in Chattanooga. Oak Ridge was the site of the world's first successful uranium enrichment operations, which were used to construct the world's first atomic bombs, two of which were dropped on Imperial Japan at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The Appalachian Regional Commission further transformed the region in the late 20th century. East Tennessee is both geographically and culturally part of

Appalachia Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...

. East Tennessee is home to the nation's most visited national park—the

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, whi ...

—and hundreds of smaller recreational areas. East Tennessee is often considered the birthplace of

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

, stemming from the 1927 Victor recording sessions in

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, and throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has produced a steady stream of musicians of national and international fame.Ted Olson and Ajay Kalra, "Appalachian Music: Examining Popular Assumptions". ''A Handbook to Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), pp. 163–170.

Geography

Unlike the geographic designations of regions of most U.S. states, the term East Tennessee has legal as well as socioeconomic and cultural meaning. Along with

Middle Tennessee Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the U.S. state of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the s ...

and

West Tennessee West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions (Tennessee), Grand Divisions of the U.S. state of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee River, Tennessee and Miss ...

, it comprises one of the state's three

Grand Divisions The Grand Divisions are three geographic regions in the U.S. state of Tennessee, each constituting roughly one-third of the state's land area, that are geographically, culturally, legally, and economically distinct. The Grand Divisions are lega ...

, whose boundaries are defined by state law. With a total land area of , comprises 32.90% of the state's land area and is the second-largest of the Grand Divisions, behind Middle Tennessee. The entirety of East Tennessee is both geographically and culturally part of

and the

and is usually considered part of the

Upland South The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern and lower Midwestern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, econom ...

. East Tennessee borders

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

to the east,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

to the northeast,

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

to the north, Georgia to the south, and

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

in the extreme southwest corner. According to custom, the boundary between East and Middle Tennessee roughly follows the dividing line between Eastern and

. Exceptions to this rule are that Bledsoe,

, and

Counties are legally defined as part of East Tennessee, despite being within the Central Time Zone.

Sequatchie County Sequatchie County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,826. Its county seat is Dunlap. Sequatchie County is part of the Chattanooga, TN– GA Metropolitan Statistical Area. Hist ...

, located between Marion and Bledsoe Counties, is legally part of Middle Tennessee but is often considered part of East Tennessee. Sequatchie County has also been defined as part of East Tennessee in the past, and Marion County has been included in Middle Tennessee. Some of the northeastern counties of Middle Tennessee that supported the Union during the American Civil War, including Fentress and

Pickett Pickett is an English surname. It is a variant form of Pigott. Notable people with the surname include: * Adarius Pickett (born 1996), American football player * Albert J. Pickett (1810–1858), American historian * Allison Deforest Pickett (190 ...

, are sometimes culturally considered part of East Tennessee. Fentress County in particular has been widely viewed by many as East Tennessee because it is located on the western edge of the Knoxville television market as opposed to Pickett County which is in the northeastern tip of Nashville television market.

Topography

East Tennessee is located within three major geological divisions of the Appalachian Mountains: the

Blue Ridge Mountains The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States, and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virgin ...

on the border with North Carolina in the east; the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians (usually called the " Great Appalachian Valley" or "Tennessee Valley") in the center; and the

Cumberland Plateau The Cumberland Plateau is the southern part of the Appalachian Plateau in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. It includes much of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and portions of northern Alabama and northwest Georgia. The terms "Alle ...

in the west, part of which is in Middle Tennessee. The southern tip of the Cumberland Mountains also extends into the region between the Cumberland Plateau and Ridge-and-Valley regions. Both the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains are part of the larger

Appalachian Plateau The Appalachian Plateau is a series of rugged dissected plateaus located on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains are a mountain range that run down the Eastern United States. The Appalachian Plateau is the nort ...

. The Blue Ridge section comprises the western section of the Blue Ridge Province, the crests of which form most of the Tennessee-North Carolina border. At an average elevation of above sea level, this physiographic province contains the highest elevations in the state. The Blue Ridge region is subdivided into several subranges—the

Iron Mountains The Iron Mountains are a mountain range, subrange of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These mountains are located around the common meeting point of Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. A portion of the Appalachian Trail runs the crest of the Iron ...

, Unaka Range, and

Bald Mountains The Bald Mountains are a mountain range rising along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeastern United States. They are part of the Blue Ridge Mountain Province of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The Bald Mountain ...

in the north; the Great Smoky Mountains in the center; and the Unicoi Mountains,

Little Frog Mountain Little Frog Mountain is a mountain located in southeastern Tennessee in the United States. It is located in the Blue Ridge province of the Appalachian Mountains, and has an elevation of . Geography Little Frog Mountain is located within the C ...

, and

Big Frog Mountain Big Frog Mountain is a mountain located primarily in southeastern Tennessee in the Big Frog Wilderness, within the Cherokee National Forest. It is located within the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountains. At an elevation of , the ...

areas in the south.

Clingmans Dome Clingmans Dome (or Clingman's Dome) is a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeastern United States. Its name in Cherokee is Kuwahi or Kuwohi (ᎫᏩᎯ or ᎫᏬᎯ), meaning "mulberry place." At an to ...

, at , is the state's highest point and is located in the Great Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Most of the Blue Ridge section is heavily forested and protected by various state and federal entities, the largest of which include the

and the Cherokee National Forest. The Appalachian Trail enters Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains and roughly follows the border with North Carolina most of the distance to near the Roan Mountain, where it shifts entirely into Tennessee. The Ridge-and-Valley division is East Tennessee's largest, lowest lying, and most populous section. It consists of a series of alternating and paralleling elongate ridges with broad river valleys in between, roughly oriented northeast-to-southwest. This section's most notable feature, the

Tennessee River The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, ...

, forms at the confluence of the Holston and

French Broad The French Broad River is a river in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee. It flows from near the town of Rosman in Transylvania County, North Carolina, into Tennessee, where its confluence with the Holston River at Knoxville forms ...

rivers in Knoxville and flows southwestward to Chattanooga. The lowest point in East Tennessee, at an elevation of approximately , is found where the Tennessee River enters Alabama in Marion County. Other notable rivers in the upper Tennessee watershed include the Clinch, Nolichucky,

Watauga Watauga can refer to: ;Places *Watauga, Kentucky * Watauga County, North Carolina * Watauga, South Dakota * Watauga, Tennessee * Watauga, Texas ;Bodies of Water * Watauga Lake in Tennessee * The Watauga River in North Carolina and Tennessee ;Shi ...

Emory Emory may refer to: Places * Emory, Texas, U.S. * Emory (crater), on the moon * Emory Peak, in Texas, U.S. * Emory River, in Tennessee, U.S. Education * Emory and Henry College, or simply Emory, in Emory, Virginia, U.S. * Emory University ...

, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee, Sequatchie, and Ocoee rivers. Notable "ridges" in the Ridge-and-Valley range, which exceed elevations much greater than most surrounding ridges and are commonly referred to as mountains, include Clinch Mountain,

Bays Mountain Bays Mountain is a ridge of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, located in eastern Tennessee. It runs southwest to northeast, from just south of Knoxville to Kingsport. Its southern segment is relatively low in elevation (up to about ). In some ...

, and

Powell Mountain Powell Mountain (or "Powells Mountain") is a mountain ridge of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians of the Appalachian Mountains. It is a long and narrow ridge, running northeast to southwest, from about Norton, Virginia to near Tazewell, Tennessee ...

. The Cumberland Plateau rises nearly above the Appalachian Valley, stretching from the Kentucky border in the north to the Georgia and Alabama borders in the south. It has an average elevation of and consists mostly of flat-topped tablelands, although the northern section is slightly more rugged. The plateau has many waterfalls and stream valleys separated by steep gorges. The "Tennessee Divide" runs along the western part of the plateau, separating the watersheds of the Tennessee and

rivers. Plateau counties mostly east of this divide—i.e. Cumberland,

Morgan Morgan may refer to: People and fictional characters * Morgan (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Morgan le Fay, a powerful witch in Arthurian legend * Morgan (surname), a surname of Welsh origin * Morgan (singer), ...

, and

Scott Scott may refer to: Places Canada * Scott, Quebec, municipality in the Nouvelle-Beauce regional municipality in Quebec * Scott, Saskatchewan, a town in the Rural Municipality of Tramping Lake No. 380 * Rural Municipality of Scott No. 98, Saska ...

—are grouped with East Tennessee, whereas plateau counties west of this divide, such as Fentress,

Van Buren Martin Van Buren ( ; nl, Maarten van Buren; ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he ...

, and Grundy, are considered part of Middle Tennessee. Most of the

Sequatchie Valley Sequatchie Valley is a relatively long and narrow valley in the U.S. state of Tennessee and, in some definitions, Alabama. It is generally considered to be part of the Cumberland Plateau region of the Appalachian Mountains; it was probably formed ...

, a long narrow valley in the southeastern part of the Cumberland Plateau, is in East Tennessee. The part of the plateau east of the Sequatchie Valley is called

Walden Ridge Walden Ridge (or Walden's Ridge) is a mountain ridge and escarpment located in Tennessee, in the United States. It marks the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau and is generally considered part of it. Walden Ridge is about long, running gen ...

. One notable detached section of the plateau is

Lookout Mountain Lookout Mountain is a mountain ridge located at the northwest corner of the U.S. state of Georgia, the northeast corner of Alabama, and along the southeastern Tennessee state line in Chattanooga. Lookout Mountain was the scene of the 18th-centu ...

, which overlooks Chattanooga. West of Chattanooga, the Tennessee River flows through the plateau in the Tennessee River Gorge. The Cumberland Mountains begin directly north of the Sequatchie Valley and extend northward to the Cumberland Gap at the Tennessee-Kentucky-Virginia tripoint. While technically a separate physiographic region, the Cumberland Mountains are usually considered part of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. The Cumberland Mountains reach elevations above in Tennessee, and their largest subrange is the

Crab Orchard Mountains The Crab Orchard Mountains are a rugged, detached range of the southern Cumberland Mountains. They are situated in East Tennessee atop the Cumberland Plateau just west of the plateau's eastern escarpment, and comprise parts of Morgan, Anderso ...

. The Cumberland Trail traverses the eastern escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains.

Counties

* Anderson * Bledsoe * Blount * Bradley *

Campbell Campbell may refer to: People Surname * Campbell (surname), includes a list of people with surname Campbell Given name * Campbell Brown (footballer), an Australian rules footballer * Campbell Brown (journalist) (born 1968), American television ne ...

Carter Carter(s), or Carter's, Tha Carter, or The Carter(s), may refer to: Geography United States * Carter, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Carter, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Carter, Montana, a census-designated place * Carter, ...

* Claiborne *

Cocke Cocke is a surname (pronounced ''cock'', ''cox'' or ''coke'') and may refer to: * Charles Lewis Cocke (1940- ) Professor of Physics at Kansas State University, winner of 2006 Davisson–Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics *Erle Cocke Jr. (19 ...

Grainger Grainger may refer to: Places *Grainger, Alberta, a locality in Canada *Grainger County, Tennessee, a county located in Tennessee, United States *Grainger Falls, a waterfall in Chalky Inland, Fiordland, New Zealand *Grainger Market, a covered mark ...

* Greene * Hamblen *

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: People * Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname ** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland ** Lord Hamilt ...

* Hancock * Hawkins *

Jefferson Jefferson may refer to: Names * Jefferson (surname) * Jefferson (given name) People * Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), third president of the United States * Jefferson (footballer, born 1970), full name Jefferson Tomaz de Souza, Brazilian foo ...

Johnson Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...

* Knox * Loudon *

* McMinn * Meigs * Monroe *

Polk Polk may refer to: People * James K. Polk, 11th president of the United States * Polk (name), other people with the name Places *Polk (CTA), a train station in Chicago, Illinois * Polk, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Polk, Missouri ...

* Rhea *

Roane Roane is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Anthony Roane (died 1583), English politician *Archibald Roane (1769–1819), 2nd Governor of Tennessee *John Roane (1766–1838), American politician *John Roane (1794–1869), America ...

Sevier Sevier ( ) is an unincorporated community in southwestern Sevier County, Utah, United States. It lies in the valley of the Sevier River along U.S. Route 89 southwest of the city of Richfield, the county seat of Sevier County. Its elevation is ...

* Sullivan *

Unicoi Unicoi may refer to: *Unicoi Mountains, a mountain range rising along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeastern United States *Unicoi, Tennessee *Unicoi County, Tennessee *Unicoi State Park Unicoi State Park & Lodge is a ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

The Official Tourism Website of Tennessee has a definition of East Tennessee slightly different from the legal definition; the website excludes Cumberland County while including Grundy and Sequatchie Counties.

Climate

Most of East Tennessee has a

humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a zone of climate characterized by hot and humid summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between latitudes 25° and 40° ...

, with the exception of some of the higher elevations in the Blue Ridge and Cumberland Mountains, which are classified as a cooler mountain temperate or

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...

. As the highest-lying region in the state, East Tennessee averages slightly lower temperatures than the rest of the state and has the highest rate of snowfall, which averages more than annually in the highest mountains, although many of the lower elevations often receive no snow. The lowest recorded temperature in state history, at , was recorded at Mountain City on December 30, 1917. Fog is common, especially in the Ridge-and-Valley region, and often presents a significant hazard to motorists.

Demographics

East Tennessee is the second most populous and most densely populated of the three Grand Divisions. At the 2020 census it had 2,470,105 inhabitants living in its 33 counties, an increase of 142,561, or 6.12%, over the

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

figure of 2,327,544 residents. Its population was 35.74% of the state's total, and its population density was . Prior to the 2010 census, East Tennessee was the most populous of the Grand Divisions but was surpassed by Middle Tennessee, which contains the rapidly-growing

Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...

and Clarksville metropolitan areas. Demographically, East Tennessee is one of the regions in the United States with one of the highest concentrations of people who identify as

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

European American European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent Eu ...

. In the 2010 census, every county in East Tennessee except for Knox and Hamilton, the two most populous counties, had a population that was greater than 90% White. In most counties in East Tennessee, persons of

Hispanic or Latino ''Hispanic'' and ''Latino'' are ethnonyms used to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry (). While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, for example, by the United States C ...

origins outnumber African Americans, which is uncommon in the Southeastern United States. Large African American populations are found in Chattanooga and Knoxville, as well as considerable populations in several smaller cities.

Cities and metropolitan areas

The major cities of East Tennessee are Knoxville, which is near the geographic center of the region; Chattanooga, which is in southeastern Tennessee at the Georgia border; and the "Tri-Cities" of

, Johnson City, and Kingsport, located in the extreme northeastern part of the state. Of the ten metropolitan statistical areas in Tennessee, six are in East Tennessee.

Combined statistical area Combined statistical area (CSA) is a United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) term for a combination of adjacent metropolitan (MSA) and micropolitan statistical areas (µSA) across the 50 US states and the territory of Puerto Ric ...

s include Knoxville-Morristown-Sevierville, Chattanooga–Cleveland–Dalton, and Tri-Cities. Knoxville, with about 190,000 residents, is the state's third largest city and contains the state's third largest metropolitan area, with about 1 million residents. Chattanooga, with a population of more than 180,000, is the state's fourth largest city and anchors a metropolitan area with more than 500,000 residents, of whom approximately one-third live in Georgia. The Tri-Cities, while defined by the

Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). OMB's most prominent function is to produce the president's budget, but it also examines agency programs, pol ...

as the Kingsport-Bristol and Johnson City metropolitan areas, are usually considered one population center, which is the third-most populous in East Tennessee and the fifth-largest statewide. Most of East Tennessee's population is found in the Ridge-and Valley region, including that of its major cities. Other important cities in the Ridge and Valley region include

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

, Maryville, Oak Ridge,

Sevierville Sevierville ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Sevier County, Tennessee, located in eastern Tennessee. The population was 17,889 at the 2020 United States Census. History Native Americans of the Woodland period were among the first human ...

, Morristown, and

Greeneville Greeneville is a town in and the county seat of Greene County, Tennessee, United States. The population as of the 2020 census was 15,479. The town was named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, and it is the second oldest town ...

. The region also includes the

and Morristown metropolitan areas, each of which contain more than 100,000 residents. The Blue Ridge section of the state is much more sparsely populated, its main cities being

Elizabethton Elizabethton is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government (known as the Watauga Association, created in 1772) located west of both th ...

, Pigeon Forge, and

Gatlinburg Gatlinburg is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee, United States. It is located southeast of Knoxville and had a population of 3,944 at the 2010 Census and a U.S. Census population of 3,577 in 2020. It is a popular vacation resort ...

. Crossville is the largest city in the plateau region, which is also sparsely populated. Most residents of the East Tennessee region commute by car with the lack of alternative modes of transportation such as commuter rail or regional bus systems. Residents of the metropolitan areas for Knoxville, Morristown, Chattanooga, and the Tri-Cities region have an estimated one-way commute of 23 minutes.

Congressional districts

East Tennessee includes all of the state's 1st,

2nd A second is the base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI). Second, Seconds or 2nd may also refer to: Mathematics * 2 (number), as an ordinal (also written as ''2nd'' or ''2d'') * Second of arc, an angular measurement unit ...

, and

3rd Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * Second#Sexagesimal divisions of calendar time and day, 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (d ...

congressional districts and part of the

4th Fourth or the fourth may refer to: * the ordinal form of the number 4 * ''Fourth'' (album), by Soft Machine, 1971 * Fourth (angle), an ancient astronomical subdivision * Fourth (music), a musical interval * ''The Fourth'' (1972 film), a Sovie ...

district. The 1st District is concentrated around the Tri-Cities region and Upper East Tennessee. The 2nd District includes Knoxville and the mountain counties to the south. The 3rd District includes the Chattanooga area and the counties north of Knoxville (the two areas are connected by a narrow corridor in eastern Roane County). The 4th, which extends into an area southeast of Nashville, includes several of East Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau counties.

History

Native Americans

Much of what is known about East Tennessee's prehistoric Native Americans comes as a result of the Tennessee Valley Authority's reservoir construction, as federal law required archaeological investigations to be conducted in areas that were to be flooded. Excavations at the

Icehouse Bottom Icehouse Bottom is a prehistoric Native American site in Monroe County, Tennessee, located on the Little Tennessee River in the southeastern United States. Native Americans were using the site as a semi-permanent hunting camp as early as 7500 BC, ...

site near Vonore revealed that Native Americans were living in East Tennessee on at least a semi-annual basis as early as 7,500 B.C. The region's significant

Woodland period In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 Common Era, BCE to European con ...

(1000 B.C. – 1000 A.D.) sites include Rose Island (also near Vonore) and

Moccasin Bend Moccasin Bend Archeological District is an archeological site in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that is part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park unit. The National Park Service refers to it as one of the "most unique units found in t ...

(near Chattanooga). During what archaeologists call the

Mississippian period The Mississippian ( , also known as Lower Carboniferous or Early Carboniferous) is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earlier of two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly ...

(c. 1000–1600 A.D.), East Tennessee's indigenous inhabitants were living in complex

agrarian societies An agrarian society, or agricultural society, is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture ...

at places such as Toqua and

Hiwassee Island Hiwassee Island, also known as Jollys Island and Benham Island, is located in Meigs County, Tennessee, at the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. It is about northeast of Chattanooga. The island was the second largest land mass on the ...

, and had formed a minor chiefdom known as Chiaha in the French Broad Valley. Spanish expeditions led by

Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto (; ; 1500 – 21 May, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and '' conquistador'' who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire ...

Tristan de Luna Tristan (Latin/ Brythonic: ''Drustanus''; cy, Trystan), also known as Tristram or Tristain and similar names, is the hero of the legend of Tristan and Iseult. In the legend, he is tasked with escorting the Irish princess Iseult to wed ...

, and Juan Pardo all visited East Tennessee's Mississippian-period inhabitants during the 16th century. Some of the Native peoples who are known to have inhabited the region during this time include the

Muscogee Creek The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language), are a group of related indigenous (Native American) peoples of the Southeastern WoodlandsYuchi, and

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

. By the early 18th century, most Natives in Tennessee had disappeared, very likely wiped out by diseases introduced by the Spaniards, leaving the region sparsely populated. The

Cherokee The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...

began migrating into what is now East Tennessee from what is now

in the latter 17th century, possibly to escape expanding European settlement and diseases in the north. The Cherokee established a series of towns concentrated in the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee valleys that became known as the Overhill towns, since traders from

South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

, and Virginia had to cross over the mountains to reach them. Early in the 18th century, the Cherokee forced the remaining members of other Native American groups out of the state.

Pioneer period

The first recorded Europeans to reach the area were three expeditions led by Spanish explorers:

in 1540–1541,

in 1559, and Juan Pardo in 1566–1567. Pardo recorded the name "Tanasqui" from a local Native American village, which evolved into the state's current name. In 1673, Abraham Wood, a British fur trader, sent an expedition led by James Needham and Gabriel Arthur from Fort Henry in the

Colony of Virginia The Colony of Virginia, chartered in 1606 and settled in 1607, was the first enduring English colonial empire, English colony in North America, following failed attempts at settlement on Newfoundland (island), Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey GilbertG ...

into Overhill Cherokee territory in modern-day northeastern Tennessee. Needham was killed during the expedition and Arthur was taken prisoner, and remained with the Cherokees for more than a year. Longhunters from Virginia explored much of East Tennessee in the 1750s and 1760s in expeditions which lasted several months or even years. The Cherokee alliance with Britain during the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the ...

led to the construction of Fort Loudoun in 1756 near present-day Vonore, which was the first British settlement in what is now Tennessee. Fort Loudoun was the westernmost British outpost to that date and was designed by

John William Gerard de Brahm John William Gerard de Brahm (1718 c. 1799) was a German cartographer, engineer and mystic. Life He was born in Koblenz, Germany, the eight child of a court musician employed by the Elector of Trier. He became "Captain Engineer" in the Imperi ...

and constructed by forces under Captain Raymond Demeré. Shortly after its completion, Demeré relinquished command of the fort to his brother, Captain Paul Demeré. Hostilities erupted between the British and the Overhill Cherokees into an armed conflict, and a siege of the fort ended with its surrender in 1760. The next morning, Paul Demeré and many his men were killed in an ambush nearby, and most of the rest of the garrison was taken prisoner. A peace expedition led by

Henry Timberlake Henry Timberlake (1730 or 1735 – September 30, 1765) was a colonial Anglo-American officer, journalist, and cartographer. He was born in the Colony of Virginia and died in England. He is best known for his work as an emissary from the British ...

in 1761 provided later travelers with invaluable knowledge regarding the location of the Overhill towns and the customs of the Overhill Cherokee. The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 brought a stream of explorers and traders into the region, among them additional longhunters. In an effort to mitigate conflicts with the Natives, Britain issued the

Royal Proclamation of 1763 The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III on 7 October 1763. It followed the Treaty of Paris (1763), which formally ended the Seven Years' War and transferred French territory in North America to Great Britain. The Procla ...

which forbade settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. Despite this proclamation, migration across the mountains continued, and the first permanent European settlers began arriving in northeastern Tennessee in the late 1760s. In 1769 William Bean, an associate of famed explorer Daniel Boone, built what is generally acknowledged as Tennessee's first permanent Euro-American residence in Tennessee along the Watauga River in present-day Johnson City. Shortly thereafter, James Robertson and a group of migrants from North Carolina (some historians suggest they were refugees of the Regulator wars) formed the Watauga Settlement at Sycamore Shoals in modern-day

on lands leased from the Cherokees. In 1772, the Wataugans established the

Watauga Association The Watauga Association (sometimes referred to as the Republic of Watauga) was a semi-autonomous government created in 1772 by frontier settlers living along the Watauga River in what is now Elizabethton, Tennessee. Although it lasted only a few ...

, which was the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians and the germ cell of the state of Tennessee. Most of these settlers were English or of primarily

English descent The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history and culture. The English identity is of Anglo-Saxon origin, when they were known in ...

, but nearly 20% of them were Scotch-Irish. In 1775, the settlers reorganized themselves into the Washington District to support the cause of the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

, which had begun months before. The following year, the settlers petitioned the Colony of Virginia to annex the Washington District to provide protection from Native American attacks, which was denied. Later that year, they petitioned the government of North Carolina to annex the Washington District, which was granted in November 1776. In 1775, Richard Henderson negotiated a series of treaties with the Cherokee to sell the lands of the Watauga settlements. Later that year, Daniel Boone, under Henderson's employment, blazed a trail from

Fort Chiswell Chiswell , sometimes , is a small village at the southern end of Chesil Beach, in Underhill, on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. It is the oldest settlement on the island, having formerly been known as Chesilton. The small bay at Chiswell is ca ...

in Virginia through the Cumberland Gap, which became part of the

Wilderness Road The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other (mo ...

, a major thoroughfare for settlers into Tennessee and Kentucky. That same year, a faction of Cherokees led by Dragging Canoe— angry over the tribe's appeasement of European settlers— split off to form what became known as the Chickamauga faction, which was concentrated around what is now Chattanooga. The next year, the Chickamauga, aligned with British loyalists, attacked Fort Watauga. The warnings of Dragging Canoe's cousin Nancy Ward spared many settlers' lives from the initial attacks. In spite of Dragging Canoe's protests, the Cherokee were continuously induced to sign away most of the tribe's lands to the U.S. government. During the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

, the Wataugans supplied 240 militiamen (led by John Sevier) to the frontier force known as the

Overmountain Men The Overmountain Men were American frontiersmen from west of the Blue Ridge Mountains which are the leading edge of the Appalachian Mountains, who took part in the American Revolutionary War. While they were present at multiple engagements in th ...

, which defeated

British loyalists Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to the The Crown, British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often referred to as Tories, Royalists or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the Patriot (Ame ...

at the

Battle of Kings Mountain The Battle of Kings Mountain was a military engagement between Patriot and Loyalist militias in South Carolina during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War, resulting in a decisive victory for the Patriots. The battle took plac ...

in 1780. Tennessee's first attempt at statehood was the

State of Franklin The State of Franklin (also the Free Republic of Franklin or the State of Frankland)Landrum, refers to the proposed state as "the proposed republic of Franklin; while Wheeler has it as ''Frankland''." In ''That's Not in My American History Boo ...

, formed in 1784 from three Washington District counties. Its capital was initially at Jonesborough and later

, and eventually grew to include eight counties. After several unsuccessful attempts at statehood, the State of Franklin rejoined North Carolina in 1788. North Carolina ceded the region to the federal government, which designated it as the Southwest Territory on May 26, 1790. William Blount was appointed as the territorial governor by President

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

, and Blount and James White established Knoxville as the territory's capital in 1791. The Southwest Territory recorded a population of 35,691 in the first United States census that year, about three-fourths of whom resided in what is now East Tennessee. In addition to the English and Scotch-Irish settlers, there were also Welsh families who settled in East Tennessee in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A larger group of settlers, entirely of English descent, arrived from Virginia's Middle Peninsula. They arrived as a result of large landowners buying up land and expanding in such a way that smaller landholders had to leave the area to prosper.

Antebellum period

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a series of land cessions were negotiated with the Cherokees as settlers pushed south of the Washington District. The 1791 Treaty of Holston, negotiated by William Blount, established terms of relations between the United States and the Cherokees. The First Treaty of Tellico established the boundaries of the Treaty of Holston, and a series of treaties over the next two decades ceded small amounts of Cherokee lands to the U.S. government. In the Calhoun Treaty of 1819, the U.S. government purchased Cherokee lands between the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. In anticipation of forced removal of the Cherokees, white settlers began moving into Cherokee lands in southeast Tennessee in the 1820s and 1830s. East Tennessee was home to one of the nation's first abolitionist movements, which arose in the early 19th century.

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

s, who had migrated to the region from Pennsylvania in the 1790s, formed the Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1814. Notable supporters included

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

clergyman

Samuel Doak Samuel Doak (1749–1830) was an American Presbyterian clergyman, Calvinist educator, and a former slave owner in the early movement in the United States for the abolition of slavery. Early life Samuel Doak was born August 1, 1749, in Augusta Coun ...

Tusculum College Tusculum University is a private Presbyterian university with its main campus in Tusculum, Tennessee. It is Tennessee's first university and the 28th-oldest operating college in the United States. In addition to its main campus, the institution ...

cofounder

Hezekiah Balch Hezekiah Balch, D.D. (1741–1810) was a Presbyterian minister and the founder of Greeneville College (Greeneville, Tennessee) in 1794. After the Civil War, Greeneville College merged with what is now Tusculum University. Early life and edu ...

, and

Maryville College Maryville College is a private liberal arts college in Maryville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1819 by Presbyterian minister Isaac L. Anderson for the purpose of furthering education and enlightenment into the West. The college is one of the ...

president Isaac Anderson. In 1820,

Elihu Embree Elihu Embree (November 11, 1782 – December 4, 1820) was an abolitionist in Jonesborough, Tennessee and publisher of ''Manumission Intelligencier'' (later renamed as ''The Emancipator''). Founded in 1819, it was the first newspaper in the United S ...

established ''The Emancipator''— the nation's first exclusively abolitionist newspaper— in Jonesborough. After Embree's death, Benjamin Lundy established the ''Genius of Universal Emancipation'' in Greeneville in 1821 to continue Embree's work. By the 1830s, however, the region's abolitionist movement had declined in the face of fierce opposition. The geography of East Tennessee, unlike parts of Middle and West Tennessee, did not allow for large plantation complexes, and as a result, slavery remained relatively uncommon in the region. In the 1820s, the Cherokees established a government modeled on the U.S. Constitution, and located their capitol at New Echota in northern Georgia. In response to restrictive laws passed by the Georgia legislature, the Cherokees in 1832 moved their capital to the Red Clay Council Grounds in what is now Bradley County, a short distance north of the border with Georgia. A total of eleven general councils were held at the site between 1832 and 1838, during which the Cherokees rejected multiple compromises to surrender their lands east of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

and move west. The 1835 Treaty of New Echota which was not approved by the National Council at Red Clay, stipulated that the Cherokee relocate to

Indian Territory The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the Federal government of the United States, United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans in the United St ...

in present-day

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

, and provided a grace period until May 1838 for them to voluntarily migrate. In 1838 and 1839, U.S. troops forcibly removed nearly 17,000 Cherokees and about 2,000 Black people the Cherokees enslaved from their homes in southeastern Tennessee to Indian Territory. An estimated 4,000 died along the way. The operation was orchestrated from Fort Cass in

Charleston Charleston most commonly refers to: * Charleston, South Carolina * Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital * Charleston (dance) Charleston may also refer to: Places Australia * Charleston, South Australia Canada * Charleston, Newfoundlan ...

, which was constructed on the site of the

Indian agency In United States history, an Indian agent was an individual authorized to interact with American Indian tribes on behalf of the government. Background The federal regulation of Indian affairs in the United States first included development of t ...

. In the

Cherokee language 200px, Number of speakers Cherokee or Tsalagi ( chr, ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, ) is an endangered-to-moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. ''Ethnologue'' states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speaker ...

, the event is called ''Nunna daul Isunyi'', meaning "the Trail Where We Cried", and it is commonly known as the

Trail of Tears The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, ...

. The arrival of the railroad in the 1850s brought immediate economic benefits to East Tennessee, primarily to Chattanooga, which had been founded in 1839. Chattanooga quickly developed into a nexus between the mountain communities of Southern Appalachia and the cotton states of the Deep South, being referred to as the Gateway to the Deep South. In 1843, copper was discovered in the Copper Basin in the extreme southeast corner of the state, and by the 1850s, large industrial-scale mining operations were taking place, making the Copper Basin one of the most productive copper mining districts in the nation.

Civil War

1861 Secession vote in East Tennessee by county

The

sentiments of East Tennesseans were among the most complex of any region in the nation. Because of the rarity of slavery in the region, many East Tennesseans were suspicious of the aristocratic Southern planter class that dominated the

Southern Democratic Party The Southern Democratic Party ( it, Partito Democratico Meridionale, PDM) was a centrist political party in Italy based in Calabria. The Southern Democratic Party was founded in 2006, as a split from the regional organisation of Democracy is Freed ...

and most Southern state legislatures. For this reason, Whig support ran high in East Tennessee in the years leading up to the war, especially in Knox and surrounding counties. In 1860, slaves composed about 9% of East Tennessee's population, compared to 25% statewide. When Tennessee voted on a referendum calling for secession in February 1861, which failed, more than 80% of East Tennesseans voted against it, including majorities in every county except Sullivan and Meigs. In June 1861, nearly 70% of East Tennesseans voted against the state's second ordinance of secession which succeeded statewide. Along with Sullivan and Meigs, however, there were pro-secession majorities in Monroe, Rhea, Sequatchie, and Polk counties.Eric Lacy, ''Vanquished Volunteers: East Tennessee Sectionalism from Statehood to Secession'' (Johnson City, Tenn.: East Tennessee State University Press, 1965), pp. 122–126, 217–233. There were also pro-secession majorities within the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, although these cities' respective counties voted decisively against secession.Timothy Ezzell
Chattanooga
''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: August 18, 2009. In June 1861, the Unionist

East Tennessee Convention The East Tennessee Convention was an assembly of Southern Unionist delegates primarily from East Tennessee that met on three occasions during the Civil War. The Convention most notably declared the secessionist actions taken by the Tennessee sta ...

met in Greeneville, where it drafted a petition to the

Tennessee General Assembly The Tennessee General Assembly (TNGA) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is a part-time bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Speaker of the Senate carries the additional title ...

demanding that East Tennessee be allowed to form a separate Union-aligned state split off from the rest of Tennessee, similar to

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

. The legislature rejected the petition, however, and Tennessee Governor

Isham Harris Isham Green Harris (February 10, 1818July 8, 1897) was an American politician who served as the 16th governor of Tennessee from 1857 to 1862, and as a U.S. senator from 1877 until his death. He was the state's first governor from West Tennessee. ...

ordered Confederate troops to occupy East Tennessee. In the fall of 1861, Unionist guerrillas burned bridges and attacked Confederate sympathizers throughout the region, leading the Confederacy to invoke

martial law Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Marti ...

in parts of East Tennessee. Senator

Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Dem ...

and Congressman

Horace Maynard Horace Maynard (August 30, 1814 – May 3, 1882) was an American educator, attorney, politician and diplomat active primarily in the second half of the 19th century. Initially elected to the House of Representatives from Tennessee's 2nd Cong ...

—who in spite of being from a Confederate state retained their seats in Congress—continuously pressed President

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

to send troops into East Tennessee, and Lincoln subsequently made the liberation of East Tennessee a top priority. ''

Knoxville Whig The ''Whig'' was a polemical American newspaper published and edited by William G. "Parson" Brownlow (1805–1877) in the mid-nineteenth century. As its name implies, the paper's primary purpose was the promotion and defense of Whig Party p ...

'' editor William "Parson" Brownlow, who had been one of slavery's most outspoken defenders, attacked secessionism with equal fervor and embarked on a speaking tour of the Northern states to rally support for East Tennessee. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson, a War Democrat, as military governor of Tennessee. Several crucial Civil War military campaigns took place in East Tennessee, although the region did not see any large-scale fighting until the second half of the war, unlike the rest of the state. After being defeated at the

Battle of Chickamauga The Battle of Chickamauga, fought on September 19–20, 1863, between United States, U.S. and Confederate States of America, Confederate forces in the American Civil War, marked the end of a Union Army, Union offensive, the Chickamauga Campaign ...

in northwest Georgia in September 1863, Union troops of the Army of the Cumberland under the command of William Rosecrans fled to Chattanooga. Confederate troops under

Braxton Bragg Braxton Bragg (March 22, 1817 – September 27, 1876) was an American army officer during the Second Seminole War and Mexican–American War and Confederate general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, serving in the Weste ...

attempted to besiege the Union troops into surrendering, but two months later, reinforcements from the Army of the Tennessee under the command of

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

, William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Hooker, and

George Henry Thomas George Henry Thomas (July 31, 1816March 28, 1870) was an American general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and one of the principal commanders in the Western Theater. Thomas served in the Mexican–American War and later chose ...

arrived. Under the command of Hooker, the Union troops defeated the Confederates at the

Battle of Lookout Mountain The Battle of Lookout Mountain also known as the Battle Above The Clouds was fought November 24, 1863, as part of the Chattanooga Campaign of the American Civil War. Union forces under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker assaulted Lookout Mountain, Chattan ...

on November 24, and the following day Grant and Thomas completely ran the Confederates out of the city at the

Battle of Missionary Ridge The Battle of Missionary Ridge was fought on November 25, 1863, as part of the Chattanooga Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the Union victory in the Battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24, Union forces in the Military Division of ...

. These battles came to be known as the Chattanooga campaign and marked a major turning point in the war, allowing Sherman to launch the Atlanta campaign from the city in the spring of 1864. A few days after the Chattanooga campaign concluded, Confederate General

James Longstreet James Longstreet (January 8, 1821January 2, 1904) was one of the foremost Confederate generals of the American Civil War and the principal subordinate to General Robert E. Lee, who called him his "Old War Horse". He served under Lee as a corps ...

launched the Knoxville campaign in an effort to take control of the city. The campaign ended in a Union victory at the

Battle of Fort Sanders The Battle of Fort Sanders was the crucial engagement of the Knoxville Campaign of the American Civil War, fought in Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 29, 1863. Assaults by Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet failed to break through the def ...

on November 29, which was under the command of Union General Ambrose Burnside, although Longstreet defeated Union troops under the command of

James M. Shackelford James Murrell Shackelford (July 7, 1827 – September 7, 1907) was a lawyer, judge, and general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He has the distinction of having captured Confederate cavalry commander John Hunt Morgan in mid-186 ...

at the

Battle of Bean's Station The Battle of Bean's Station (December 14, 1863) was a battle fought in Grainger County, Tennessee, during the Knoxville campaign of the American Civil War. The action saw Confederate States Army, Confederate forces commanded by Lieutenant General ...

two weeks later. By the beginning of 1864, East Tennessee was largely under the control of the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

. Despite its Unionist leanings, however, it was the last part of the state to fall to the Union.

Reconstruction and the Progressive Era

After the Civil War, Northern

capitalists Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...

began investing heavily in East Tennessee, which helped the region's ravaged economy recover much faster than most of the South. Most new industry in Tennessee was constructed in East Tennessee during this time, and Chattanooga became one of the first industrialized cities in the South. Knoxville also experienced a modest manufacturing boom, and new factories were constructed in other small towns such as Kingsport, Johnson City, Cleveland, Morristown, and Maryville, making them amongst the first Southern cities to experience the results of the

Industrial Revolution in the United States The Industrial Revolution in the United States was an epoch during the first 100 years of United States history where the economy progressed from manual labor and farm labor to a greater degree of industrialization based on labor. There were ma ...

. Other cities in the region, such as Lenoir City, Harriman, Rockwood,

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

, and Englewood, were founded as

company town A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and re ...

s during this period. The Burra Burra Mine—established in the 1890s in the Copper Basin—was at its height one of the nation's copper mining operations. In 1899, the world's first

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...

bottling plant was built in Chattanooga. In the early 1900s, railroad and sawmill innovations allowed logging firms such as the Little River Lumber Company and Babock Lumber to harvest the virgin forests of the Great Smokies and adjacent ranges. Coal mining operations were established in coal-rich areas of the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains, namely in Scott County, northern Campbell County, and western Anderson County. In the early 1890s, Tennessee's controversial convict lease system sparked a miners' uprising in Anderson County that became known as the

Coal Creek War The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed bega ...

. While the uprising was eventually crushed, it induced the state to do away with convict leasing, making Tennessee the first southern state to end the controversial practice. Other ambitious ventures during the period included the construction of

Ocoee Dam No. 1 Ocoee Dam Number 1 is a hydroelectric dam on the Ocoee River in Polk County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The dam impounds the Parksville Reservoir (often called Ocoee Lake), and is the farthest downstream of four dams on the Toccoa/Ocoee River ...

and

Hales Bar Dam Hales Bar Dam was a hydroelectric dam once located on the Tennessee River in Marion County, Tennessee, United States. The Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power Company began building the dam on October 17, 1905, and completed it on November 11t ...

(completed in 1911 and 1913 respectively) by the forerunners of the

Tennessee Electric Power Company The Chattanooga and Tennessee Electric Power Company was formed in 1905 by Josephus C. Guild, Charles E. James and Anthony N. Brady to produce hydroelectric power and improving the navigation of the Tennessee River. Josephus Guild, a young engin ...

(TEPCO).James Jones, Jr.
TEPCO
''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: August 18, 2009. In the 1920s,

Tennessee Eastman Eastman Chemical Company is an American company primarily involved in the chemical industry. Once a subsidiary of Kodak, today it is an independent global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of advanced materials, chemicals and ...

—destined to become the state's largest employer—was established in Kingsport, and in nearby

the German-owned

Bemberg Corporation J. P. Bemberg was a German rayon manufacturer that produced an unusually fine artificial fiber which became known as Bemberg®. J. P. Bemberg came under the control of Vereinigte Glanzstoff-Fabriken and eventually disappeared after a series of merg ...

built two large

rayon Rayon is a semi-synthetic fiber, made from natural sources of regenerated cellulose, such as wood and related agricultural products. It has the same molecular structure as cellulose. It is also called viscose. Many types and grades of viscose f ...

mills. Equally ambitious was the Aluminum Company of America's establishment of a massive aluminum smelting operation at what is now

Alcoa Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for Aluminum Company of America) is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primary ...

in 1914, which required the construction of a large plant and company town and the building of a series of dams along the Little Tennessee River to supply the plant with hydroelectric power.Russell Parker, "Alcoa, Tennessee: The Early Years, 1919–1939." ''East Tennessee Historical Society Publications'' Vol. 48 (1976), pp. 84–100. In the late 19th to early 20th century, leisure resorts oriented on mineral springs flourished in the region, with the most popular being

Tate Springs Tate Springs was a historic world-class luxury resort complex located on U.S. Route 11W in Bean Station, Tennessee, United States. Known for its mineral spring water shipped internationally, it was considered to be one of the most popular resor ...

in Grainger County, which attracted many prestigious families of the era, including the Ford,

Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to: People with the name Rockefeller fa ...

, Firestone,

Studebaker Studebaker was an American wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana, with a building at 1600 Broadway, Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 as the Studebaker Brothers M ...

, and Mellon families. The region received international attention in the public execution of a circus elephant via hanging. After killing its trainer in a circus performance in Kingsport, the elephant was transported to Erwin in nearby Unicoi County and hanged in front of a crowd of roughly 2,500 residents. A picture of the undertaking was widely distributed by American pulp magazine ''

Argosy Argosy or The Argosy may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Argosy'' (magazine), an American pulp magazine 1882–1978 and revived 1990–1994, 2004–2006 * ''Argosy'' (UK magazine), three British magazines * Argosy spaceship in ''Escap ...

''. In the 1920s, East Tennessee surpassed Middle Tennessee as the state's most populous Grand Division, primarily as a result of the larger African American population in that region fleeing to Northern industrial cities as part of the Great Migration.

Great Depression, TVA, and World War II

Over a period of two decades, the

(TVA), created in 1933 at the height of the

, drastically altered the economic, cultural, and physical landscape of East Tennessee. TVA sought to build a series of dams across the Tennessee River watershed to control flooding, bring cheap electricity to East Tennessee, and connect Knoxville and Chattanooga to the nation's inland waterways by creating a continuously navigable channel along the entirety of the Tennessee River. Starting with Norris Dam in 1933, the agency built 10 dams in East Tennessee (and five more across the border in North Carolina and Georgia) over a period of two decades. Melton Hill and

Nickajack The area known as "Nickajack" generally refers to the rugged Appalachian foothills in eastern Tennessee and northeastern Alabama. "Nickajack" is a corruption of the Cherokee word (Ani-Kusati-yi) which translates to Coosa Town, but more likely r ...

were added in the 1960s, and the last,

Tellico Dam Tellico Dam is a dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in Loudon County, Tennessee, on the Little Tennessee River as part of the Tellico Project. Planning for a dam structure on the Little Tennessee was reported as early as 1936 but ...

, was completed in 1979 after a contentious five-year legal battle with environmentalists.Bruce Wheeler
Tennessee Valley Authority
''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: August 18, 2009. TVA also gained control of TEPCO's assets after a legal struggle in the 1930s with TEPCO president

Jo Conn Guild Josephus Conn Guild, Jr. (December 15, 1887–June 26, 1969) was an American businessman and engineer from Chattanooga, Tennessee. As president of the Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO), he became one of the staunchest and most outspoke ...

and attorney Wendell Willkie that was eventually dismissed by the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

. TVA's construction of hydroelectric dams in East Tennessee would receive criticism with for what some have perceived as excessive use of its authority of

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

and an unwillingness to compromise with landowners. All of TVA's hydroelectric projects in East Tennessee were made possible through the use of eminent domain and required the removal of 125,000 Tennessee Valley residents. Residents who refused to sell to the TVA were often forced by court orders and lawsuits. Several dam projects inundated historic Native American sites and American Revolution-era towns. On some occasions, land that TVA had acquired through eminent domain that was expected to be inundated was not and was sold to private developers for the construction of planned communities such as Tellico Village in Loudon County. East Tennessee's physiographic layout and rural nature made it the ideal location for the uranium enrichment facilities of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, the

U.S. federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 ...

's top secret

-era initiative to build the first

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

. Starting in 1942, the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

built what is now the city of Oak Ridge, and the following year work began on the enrichment facilities,

K-25 K-25 was the codename given by the Manhattan Project to the program to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs using the gaseous diffusion method. Originally the codename for the product, over time it came to refer to the project, the prod ...

and Y-12. During the same period, Tennessee Eastman built the

Holston Ordnance Works Holston Army Ammunition Plant (HSAAP) manufactures Research Department Explosive (RDX) and High Melting Explosive ( HMX) for ammunition production and development. It is government-owned and contractor-operated (GOCO) facility that is part of th ...

in Kingsport for the manufacture of an explosive known as

Composition B Composition B, colloquially Comp B, is an explosive consisting of castable mixtures of RDX and TNT. It is used as the main explosive filling in artillery projectiles, rockets, land mines, hand grenades and various other munitions. It was also use ...

, and the

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...

constructed the Volunteer Ordnance Works in Chattanooga to produce TNT. The ALCOA corporation, seeking to meet the wartime demand for aluminum (which was needed for aircraft construction), built its North Plant, which at the time of its completion was the world's largest plant under a single roof. To meet the region's skyrocketing demand for electricity, TVA hastened its dam construction, completing

and

Douglas Douglas may refer to: People * Douglas (given name) * Douglas (surname) Animals *Douglas (parrot), macaw that starred as the parrot ''Rosalinda'' in Pippi Longstocking *Douglas the camel, a camel in the Confederate Army in the American Civil W ...

dams in record time and building the massive

Fontana Dam Fontana Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Little Tennessee River in Swain and Graham counties, North Carolina, United States. The dam is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the early 1940s to satisfy the skyrocketin ...

just across the state line in North Carolina.

Mid-20th century to present

In 1955, Oak Ridge High School became the first public school in Tennessee to be integrated. This occurred one year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...

to be unconstitutional in '' Brown v. Board of Education''. In 1956, judge Robert Love Taylor ordered nearby Clinton High School to be integrated, and a crisis developed when pro-segregationists threatened violence, prompting Governor

Frank G. Clement Frank Goad Clement (June 2, 1920 – November 4, 1969) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 41st Governor of Tennessee from 1953 to 1959 and from 1963 to 1967. Inaugurated for the first time at age 32, he was the state's younge ...

to send

Tennessee National Guard The Tennessee Military Department is a department within the Executive Branch of Tennessee State Government with four major components. The Tennessee Army National Guard and the Tennessee Air National Guard constitute the National Guard in Tenne ...

troops to assist with the integration process. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, federal investments into urbanized areas provided major cities of the East Tennessee region to establish

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

initiatives, often involving the demolition or redevelopment of blighted commercial areas or neighborhoods for new public buildings and

freeways A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

. These projects would often involve the controversial removal and

redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have signif ...

of poverty-stricken and minority households. In 1965, Congress created the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to improve economic development and job opportunities in the Appalachian region. The program resulted in the construction of new and improved highways in East Tennessee through the

Appalachian Development Highway System The Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) is a series of highway corridors in the Appalachia region of the eastern United States. The routes are designed as local and regional routes for improving economic development in the historical ...

and brought new industries to rural, impoverished counties in the region that had previously been dependent on declining sectors such as coal mining and logging. With the investment of the ARC, several cities emerged as industrial hubs of the East Tennessee region, including Cleveland, Kingsport, Knoxville, and Morristown. Beginning around this time, East Tennessee, along with the rest of the state, began to benefit from the nationwide

Sun Belt The Sun Belt is a region of the United States generally considered to stretch across the Southeast and Southwest. Another rough definition of the region is the area south of the 36th parallel. Several climates can be found in the region — des ...

phenomenon, which brought additional economic growth to the region. The region saw its most rapid growth in the 1970s. Chattanooga, however, began to decline in the 1960s and was declared by the Federal government to be the most polluted city in the country in 1969. In the mid-1980s, the city leaders launched a program called " Vision 2000" which worked to revitalize and reinvent the city's economy and eventually resulted in a reversal of Chattanooga's decline. TVA's construction of the

in Loudon County became the subject of national controversy in the 1970s when the endangered snail darter fish was reported to be affected by the project. After lawsuits by environmental groups, the debate was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court case ''

Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill ''Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hiram Hill et al.,'' or ''TVA v. Hill'', 437 U.S. 153 (1978), was a Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court case and the Court's first interpretation of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Af ...

'' in 1978, leading to amendments of the

Endangered Species Act The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of ec ...

. In 1982, a

World's Fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...

was held in Knoxville. The fair was also known as the "Knoxville International Energy Exposition," and its theme was "Energy Turns the World." The fair attracted more than 11 million visitors during its six-month run and is the most recent world's fair to have been held in the United States. In 1996, the whitewater slalom events of the

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

Summer Olympic Games The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inau ...

were held on the Ocoee River in Polk County. These are the only Olympic sporting events to have ever been held in Tennessee. Several high profile disasters have occurred in East Tennessee since the latter 20th century. On May 13, 1972, the deadliest motor vehicle accident in state history occurred near Bean Station on

U.S. Route 11W U.S. Route 11W (US 11W), locally known as Bloody 11W, is a divided highway of US 11 in the U.S. states of Tennessee and Virginia. The U.S. Highway, which is complemented by US 11E to the south and east, runs from US 11, US 11E, and US 70 in ...

when a tractor-trailer and a

Greyhound bus Greyhound Lines, Inc. (commonly known as simply Greyhound) operates the largest intercity bus service in North America, including Greyhound Mexico. It also operates charter bus services, Amtrak Thruway services, commuter bus services, and pac ...

collided head-on, killing 14 and injuring 15. The accident prompted the rapid construction of additional four-lane arterial highways in the East Tennessee region throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, as well as placed a focus on the completion of Interstates 40, 75, and 81, which occurred in the mid-1970s. On December 11, 1990, a 99-vehicle collision occurred in dense fog on Interstate 75 near

Calhoun John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) was the 7th vice president of the United States. Calhoun can also refer to: Surname * Calhoun (surname) Inhabited places in the United States *Calhoun, Georgia *Calhoun, Illinois *Calhoun, Kansas *Calhoun, Kentucky ...

, killing 12 and injuring 42, and was reportedly the largest motor vehicle accident in U.S. history at the time, in terms of the number of vehicles. On December 23, 2008, the largest industrial waste spill in United States history occurred at TVA's

Kingston Fossil Plant Kingston Fossil Plant, commonly known as Kingston Steam Plant, is a 1.4-gigawatt (1,398 megawatt, MW) coal-fired power plant located in Roane County, Tennessee, Roane County, just outside Kingston, Tennessee on the shore of Watts Bar Lake. It is o ...

when a

dike Dyke (UK) or dike (US) may refer to: General uses * Dyke (slang), a slang word meaning "lesbian" * Dike (geology), a subvertical sheet-like intrusion of magma or sediment * Dike (mythology), ''Dikē'', the Greek goddess of moral justice * Dikes, ...

failed, releasing more than 1.1 billion gallons of

coal ash Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when de ...

slurry into the

and Clinch Rivers. The cleanup cost TVA more than $1 billion and was completed in 2015.

Music

Appalachian music has evolved from a blend of English and Scottish ballads, Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes, African-American blues, and religious music. In 1916 and 1917, British folklorist Cecil Sharp visited Flag Pond,

Harrogate Harrogate ( ) is a spa town and the administrative centre of the Borough of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the town is a tourist destination and its visitor at ...

, and other rural areas in the region where he transcribed dozens of examples of "Old World" ballads that had been passed down generation to generation from the region's early English settlers.

Uncle Am Stuart Ambrose Gaines "Uncle Am" Stuart (1853–1926) was an American Old-time fiddle player. After winning various fiddle contests across the Southern Appalachian region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Stuart made several recordings in ...

, Charlie Bowman,

Clarence Ashley Clarence "Tom" Ashley (September 29, 1895 – June 2, 1967) was an American musician and singer, who played the clawhammer banjo and the guitar. He began performing at medicine shows in the Appalachia, Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911 ...

G. B. Grayson Gilliam Banmon Grayson (November 11, 1887 – August 16, 1930) was an American Old-time fiddle player and singer. Mostly blind from infancy, Grayson is chiefly remembered for a series of sides recorded with guitarist Henry Whitter between 1927 a ...

, and

Theron Hale Theron Evan Hale (May 21, 1883 – January 29, 1954) was an American old-time fiddle and banjo player. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry in the late 1920s and 1930s, and is often remembered as a more laid back and sedate alternative to ...

were among the most successful early musicians from East Tennessee. In 1927, the

Victor Talking Machine Company The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer that operated independently from 1901 until 1929, when it was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America and subsequently operated as a subsidia ...

conducted a series of recording sessions in

that saw the rise of musicians such as

Jimmie Rodgers James Charles Rodgers (September 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as "the Father of Country Music", he is best known for his distinctive rhythmi ...

and the Carter Family. Subsequent recording sessions, such as the Johnson City sessions in 1928 and the Knoxville St. James Sessions in 1930 proved lucrative, but by the late 1930s, the success of the

Grand Ole Opry The ''Grand Ole Opry'' is a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM. Currently owned and operated by Opry Entertainment (a divis ...

had lured much of the region's talent to Nashville. In the 1940s, the Grand Ole Opry and associated music labels began using "

country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...

" instead of "hillbilly" for their genre, hoping to attract a wider audience. Union County would prove influential to later developments in country music with musicians

Roy Acuff Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music", Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown ...

, Chet Atkins, and Carl Smith who were born in the county assisted with the international breakthrough of the genre, and the development of the

Nashville sound The Nashville Sound originated during the mid-1950s as a subgenre of American country music, replacing the chart dominance of the rough honky tonk music, which was most popular in the 1940s and 1950s, with "smooth strings and choruses", "sophist ...

and

rockabilly Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western music ...

In popular culture

East Tennessee culture has been represented in several songs, television shows, and films. '' The Ford Show'', which ran on NBC from 1956 until 1961, was hosted by Tennessee Ernie Ford from

. ''Christy'', a 1990s CBS television series, was based on village life in 1910s East Tennessee."One Week Out: Events coming next weekend," ''The Daily Times'' (Maryville, TN), June 13, 2008, Weekend section: ''"Although Cutter Gap does not exist, it is widely believed that Marshall based the village on the real community of Morgan Branch in nearby Cocke County. Townsend served as Cutter Gap for the popular CBS television series 'Christy' in the mid-1990s."'' The show, which was later developed into a television movie series, featured traditional mountain music. "ChristyFest", held each summer, is dedicated to the

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

, musical, TV series, and movies, and includes live folk music. The television film ''

Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors ''Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors'' is a 2015 American made-for-television drama film based on a true story by Dolly Parton, written by Pamela K. Long and directed by Stephen Herek. The film premiered on NBC on December 10, 2015. The film re ...

'' aired on NBC in 2015. The film was inspired by her 1971

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...

and

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

of the same name, and recounts her childhood in the mountains of East Tennessee. The film was generally praised by critics, and received the Tex Ritter Award from the

Academy of Country Music The Academy of Country Music (ACM) was founded in 1964 in Los Angeles, California as the Country & Western Music Academy. Among the founders were Eddie Miller, Tommy Wiggins, and Mickey and Chris Christensen. They wanted to promote country music ...

. The folk hero Daniel Boone, who helped explore East Tennessee, was honored in the soundtrack for the television series ''Daniel Boone'', which ran from 1964 until 1970. The last of three versions of the theme song was sung by The Imperials, a Grammy-winning Christian music group.

The Ballad of Davy Crockett "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" is a song with music by George Bruns and lyrics by Thomas W. Blackburn. It was introduced on ABC's television series ''Disneyland'', in the premiere episode of October 27, 1954. Fess Parker is shown performing the ...

helped to popularize the 1955 film '' Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier''. First recorded and introduced on the television series ''

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney in ...

'' in 1954, it has been covered by a number of artists, most notably Tennessee Ernie Ford. The song's lyrics say

Davy Crockett David Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was an American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He is often referred to in popular culture as the "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Re ...

was "born on a mountaintop in Tennessee", but his actual birthplace was in Limestone, Tennessee, the location of

Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park David Crockett Birthplace State Park (previously called Davy Crockett Birthplace State Historic Park) is a state park in Greene County, Tennessee, United States. Situated along the Nolichucky River, the park consists of centered on the tradi ...

. In addition to his renowned frontier exploits and military service, Crockett served Tennessee as a state legislator and Congressman.

Economy

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, East Tennessee's economy relied heavily on

subsistence agriculture Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...

. Agriculture still plays a vital role in Tennessee's economy. In the cities, however, manufacturing was the main source of prosperity and growth. In the years following the Civil War, Chattanooga became one of the first industrial cities in the South. Other cities in East Tennessee such as Knoxville, Kingsport, Cleveland, Maryville, and Morristown were among some of the first cities in Tennessee to experience the effects of the

Industrial revolution in the United States The Industrial Revolution in the United States was an epoch during the first 100 years of United States history where the economy progressed from manual labor and farm labor to a greater degree of industrialization based on labor. There were ma ...

, and most manufacturing facilities constructed in the state in the latter 19th century located in East Tennessee. The region's economy remained predominantly agrarian during this time, however.

Business and industry

Major companies and businesses headquartered in East Tennessee include

Pilot Flying J Pilot Travel Centers LLC, doing business as Pilot Flying J, is a North American chain of truck stops in the United States and Canada. The company is based in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Pilot Corporation, the majority owner, is based. The company ...

, the Baptist Hospital system,

Regal Cinemas Regal Cinemas (also Regal Entertainment Group) is an American movie theater chain headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee. A division of Cineworld, Regal operates the second-largest theater circuit in the United States, with over 7,200 screens i ...

in Knoxville, and

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is the largest health benefit plan company in Tennessee. It is an independent, not-for-profit organization governed by its own board of directors. The organization is part of a nationwide association of health ca ...

, U.S. Xpress,

Covenant Transport Covenant Logistics Group, Inc. (formerly Covenant Transport, Inc.) is an American company focused on truckload shipping. The company is headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee and is publicly traded on Nasdaq (NASDAQ: CVLG). The company provides ...

, and

Unum Unum Group is an American insurance company headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Founded as Union Mutual in 1848 and known as UnumProvident from 1999-2007, the company is part of the Fortune 500. Unum Group was created by the 1999 merger of ...

in Chattanooga, and Eastman Chemical in Kingsport. A variety of goods are manufactured in East Tennessee, including chemicals, foods and drinks, automotive components, and electronics. The largest manufacturer in the region is

Eastman Chemical Eastman Chemical Company is an American company primarily involved in the chemical industry. Once a subsidiary of Kodak, today it is an independent global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of advanced materials, chemicals and ...

in Kingsport, with more than 10,000 employees, and other chemical companies operate several other chemical manufacturing facilities in the region.

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...

operates an assembly plant in Chattanooga, and several automotive parts manufacturers, including Denso, operate plants in East Tennessee.

was first produced in Chattanooga in 1899, and many well-known food and drink brands originated and are made in East Tennessee, including

Mayfield Dairy Mayfield Dairy Farms is a United States dairy products company, with its headquarters in Athens, Tennessee and additional production plants in Birmingham, Alabama, and Braselton, Georgia. Since 1990 it has been under the ownership of Dean Foods. ...

products, Moon Pie, Little Debbie,

Mountain Dew Mountain Dew, stylized as Mtn Dew, is a carbonated soft drink brand produced and owned by PepsiCo. The original formula was invented in 1940 by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman. A revised formula was created by Bill Brid ...

Bush's Beans Bush Brothers and Company is a family-owned corporation best known for its Bush's Best brand canned baked beans. The company produces approximately 80 percent of the canned baked beans consumed in the United States, representing estimated annual s ...

, and M&M's. The region has emerged in recent years as one of the top locations for the legal production of

moonshine Moonshine is high-proof liquor that is usually produced illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding detection. In the first decades of the 21st century, commercial dist ...

. East Tennessee is a top location where boats are manufactured, with companies such as

Sea Ray Sea Ray Boats is an American manufacturer that produces recreational motorboats. It currently operates as part of the Brunswick Boat Group, a division of Brunswick Corporation. History It was founded in 1959 by Zach Ray as an independent company ...

MasterCraft The MasterCraft Boat Company is an American manufacturer of luxury high-performance boats. The company was founded in 1968 in Maryville, Tennessee, and is currently headquartered in Vonore, Tennessee. MasterCraft boats are used in waterskiing, ...

, and Malibu Boats, operating facilities in the region. Other important products produced in East Tennessee include

consumer electronics Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually r ...

, electrical equipment, and fabricated metal products.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research and ...

(ORNL) and

Y-12 National Security Complex The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the Manhattan Proje ...

in Oak Ridge are two of the largest employers in East Tennessee. ORNL conducts scientific research in materials science,

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

, energy,

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a mult ...

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological syst ...

, and

national security National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...

, and is also the largest national laboratory in the Department of Energy (DOE) system by size, and has the third highest budget. Both ORNL and Y-12 also support many jobs through contracting firms in the area. Since the 1990s, the geographical area between Oak Ridge and Knoxville has been known as the Tennessee Technology Corridor, with more than 500 high-tech firms located in the region. With the expanded smart grid in Chattanooga, and the fastest internet in the Western Hemisphere, Chattanooga has begun to grow its technical and financial sectors with its burgeoning start-up scene. The town of Erwin, located in the Tri-Cities area, is home to

Nuclear Fuel Services Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. (NFS) is an American company that has been a major supplier of fuel for the United States Navy's fleet of nuclear-powered vessels since the 1960s. In recent years it has also reprocessed weapons-grade uranium into nuclea ...

, which operates a manufacturing and uranium enrichment facility converting

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

-era weapons uranium into commercially usable reactor fuel for power plants around the United States, and is the largest supplier of uranium fuel for the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

since 1960.

Energy

The

(TVA) has its administrative operations headquartered in Knoxville and power operations headquartered in Chattanooga, and provides nearly all of East Tennessee's electricity. TVA operates the

Sequoyah Sequoyah (Cherokee language, Cherokee: ᏍᏏᏉᏯ, ''Ssiquoya'', or ᏎᏉᏯ, ''Se-quo-ya''; 1770 – August 1843), also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American polymath of the Ch ...

and Watts Bar nuclear plants in Soddy-Daisy and Rhea County, respectively, the

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

and Bull Run coal-fired plants, the latter of which is near Oak Ridge, the John Sevier

combined cycle A combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy. On land, when used to make electricity the most common type is called a combined cycle gas turb ...

natural gas-fired plant near Rogersville, the Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant near Chattanooga, a wind-powered facility near Oak Ridge, and several

hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

dams in East Tennessee. The two newest civilian nuclear power reactors in the United States are located at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Unit 1 began operation in 1996 and Unit 2 started operating in 2016, making it the only new nuclear power reactor to begin operation in the United States in the 21st century. Officials at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the TVA are studying advancements in nuclear power as an energy source in a joint effort, including small modular reactors.

Mining

The Ridge-and-Valley region of East Tennessee is home to several of the largest deposits of

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

in the United States, including the Mossy Creek deposits in Jefferson County and the

and Hancock counties' deposits, respectively.

Tennessee marble Tennessee marble is a type of crystalline limestone found only in East Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Long esteemed by architects and builders for its pinkish-gray color and the ease with which it is polished, this stone has been ...

, a rare crystalline form of

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

, is found only in several deposits in the East Tennessee region in the entire world. Its strong resemblance to true marble when polished has made it a popular construction material found in several structures and monuments around the United States. The stone occurs in belts of Ordovician-period rocks known as the

Holston Formation The Holston Formation, alternately known as the Holston Limestone, is a stratigraphic unit of Ordovician age within the Chickamauga Group in the Ridge-and-Valley physiographic province of the southeastern United States. A long outcrop belt o ...

, Tennessee marble achieved such popularity in the late-19th century that Knoxville, the stone's primary finishing and distribution center, became known as "The Marble City."

Tourism

While the mountain springs of East Tennessee and the cooler upper elevations of its mountainous areas have long provided a retreat from the region's summertime heat, much of East Tennessee's tourism industry is a result of land conservation movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The

, established in 1934, led to a tourism boom in Sevier and Blount counties, effectively converting the tiny mountain hamlets of

and Pigeon Forge into resort towns. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States, receiving more than 14 million visitors annually. The park also anchors a massive tourism industry in nearby Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and

, which is the third largest in the state. Attractions include Dollywood (the most visited ticketed attraction in Tennessee),

Ober Gatlinburg Ober Mountain Adventure Park & Ski Area, formerly known as Ober Gatlinburg, is a ski area and amusement park located in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, USA that was established in 1962. The area also contains a large mall with indoor amusements, an ind ...

, and Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. Other tourist attractions maintained by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

are Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, both in the Cumberland Mountains, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park,

Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail (OVHT) is part of the U.S. National Trails System, and N.C. State Trail System. It recognizes the Revolutionary War Overmountain Men, Patriots from what is now East Tennessee who crossed the Un ...

Trail of Tears National Historic Trail The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Mus ...

, and the

Manhattan Project National Historical Park Manhattan Project National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park commemorating the Manhattan Project that is run jointly by the National Park Service and United States Department of Energy, Department of Energy. The park co ...

. East Tennessee is home to several scenic roadways including the

Foothills Parkway The Foothills Parkway is a national parkway which traverses the foothills of the northern Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. The 72.1-mile (114 km) parkway will connect U.S. Route 129 (U.S. ...

, the

East Tennessee Crossing Byway The East Tennessee Crossing Byway is a National Scenic Byway in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Established in 2009, it is one of the newest byways in the National Scenic Byway system. The scenic byway traverses mostly along an unsigned concurrenc ...

, the Norris Freeway, Cumberland National Scenic Byway, the

Tail of the Dragon Deals Gap (el. ) is a mountain pass along the North Carolina–Tennessee state line, bordering the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and near the Little Tennessee River. At south of the gap is the unincorporated community that shares the ...

, the Cherohala Skyway, and the

Ocoee Scenic Byway The Ocoee Scenic Byway is a National Forest Scenic Byway and Tennessee Scenic Byway that traverses through the Cherokee National Forest, in East Tennessee. It is part of both U.S. Route 64 in Tennessee, U.S. Route 64 and U.S. Route 74, and featu ...

. The Appalachian Trail, one of the world's most well-known hiking trails, was built in the mid-1930s and passes along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The Cherokee National Forest was established during the same period and preserves most of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Tennessee that are not part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Ocoee River in Polk County attracts thousands of whitewater rafters each year and is the most rafted river in the nation. The nearby gentler Hiwassee River is also a top attraction in East Tennessee. Reservoirs created in the aftermath of the TVA's hydroelectric projects in the upper East Tennessee region, including

, Fort Loudoun, and Norris provide recreational opportunities on and along the shores via water sports, boating, fishing, and "second-home" development. Attractions in Chattanooga include the Tennessee Aquarium, the nation's largest freshwater aquarium, and Rock City, and Ruby Falls on Lookout Mountain, the latter two of which are perhaps best known for their unique advertisements painted on barn roofs across the southeast. The Tennessee Aquarium coincided with the revitalization of Chattanooga's riverfront, which helped to bolster the downtown districts. The city has become an outdoor sports mecca, being heralded as the "Best Town Ever" by ''Outside'' magazine.

Transportation

Roads

Appalachian Corridor S, Grainger County, TN

Interstate 75 (I-75) enters East Tennessee in Chattanooga, runs northeast to Knoxville, and then turns north, passing through the Cumberland Mountains into Kentucky. Interstate 40 (I-40) traverses the region in an east to west alignment, passing through Knoxville. I-40 and I-75 run

concurrent Concurrent means happening at the same time. Concurrency, concurrent, or concurrence may refer to: Law * Concurrence, in jurisprudence, the need to prove both ''actus reus'' and ''mens rea'' * Concurring opinion (also called a "concurrence"), a ...

for nearly in Knoxville and carry more than 210,000 vehicles per day at their busiest point, the highest traffic volume in Tennessee. Interstate 81 (I-81) begins about east of Knoxville, and runs northeast to Bristol. Interstate 26 (I-26), while technically an east–west route, begins in Kingsport, runs south to Johnson City, and enters North Carolina to the south, crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains. Interstate 24 (I-24) terminates in Chattanooga, and connects the region to Nashville. In Knoxville, both I-40 and I-75 each have auxiliary routes: I-140,

I-640 Interstate 640 (I-640) is an east–west auxiliary Interstate Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee. It serves as a bypass for I-40 around Downtown Knoxville and is also an alternative route for traffic passing between I-40 and I-75. All trucks ...

, and

I-275 Interstate 275 (I-275) may refer to: *Interstate 275 (Florida), a loop through Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Bradenton in Florida *Interstate 275 (Michigan), a western bypass of Detroit, Michigan *Interstate 275 (Ohio–Indiana–Kentucky), a full belt ...

. Several designated corridors of the

are located in the region, including Corridors B, F, J, K, S, and V, which provide

expressway Expressway may refer to: * Controlled-access highway, the highest-grade type of highway with access ramps, lane markings, etc., for high-speed traffic. * Limited-access road, a lower grade of highway or arterial road. *Expressway, the fictional s ...

connection to Interstate Highways. Other major surface routes in East Tennessee which are part of the National Highway System (NHS) are

U.S. Routes The United States Numbered Highway System (often called U.S. Routes or U.S. Highways) is an integrated network of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid in the contiguous United States. As the designation and numbering of these h ...

U.S. Route 11W, 11W, U.S. Route 19 in Tennessee, 19, U.S. Route 25E, 25E, U.S. Route 27 in Tennessee, 27, U.S. Route 64 in Tennessee, 64, U.S. Route 321, 321, and U.S. Route 411, 411.

Air, rail, and water

Major airports in East Tennessee include McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) in

outside of Knoxville, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA), and Tri-Cities Regional Airport (TRI) in Blountville, Tennessee, Blountville. Several other general aviation airports are located in the region. Norfolk Southern Railway operates rail lines in East Tennessee, include multiple tracks that intersect in Knoxville and Chattanooga. The Tennessee River is the only Inland waterways of the United States, navigable waterway in East Tennessee via a lock-and-canal system at through several TVA hydroelectric dams.

Higher education

The region's major public universities are the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga campuses of the University of Tennessee system, University of Tennessee and East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. Private four-year institutions include Bryan College, Carson–Newman University, King University, Lee University, Lincoln Memorial University,

, Milligan University, Johnson University, Tennessee Wesleyan University, and Tusculum University. Several public community colleges and vocational/technical schools also are located in the region, such as Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Walters State Community College in Morristown, Pellissippi State Community College near Knoxville, Chattanooga State Community College, and Cleveland State Community College. The Tennessee College of Applied Technology has several campuses across the area. The University of Tennessee's athletic teams, nicknamed the "Tennessee Volunteers, Volunteers", or "Vols", are the region's most popular sports teams, and constitute a multimillion-dollar industry.John Majors and Ann Toplovich
College Football
''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: August 18, 2009. The university's American football, football team plays at Neyland Stadium, one of the nation's largest stadiums. Neyland is flanked by the Thompson–Boling Arena, which has broken several attendance records for college men's and women's basketball.

Legal structure

According to the Tennessee State Constitution, state constitution, no more than two of the Tennessee Supreme Court's five justices can come from any one Grand Division. The Supreme Court rotates meeting in courthouses in each of the three divisions. The Supreme Court building for East Tennessee is in Knoxville. A similar rule applies to certain other commissions and boards as well, to prevent them from showing a geographic and population bias.

Politics

Politically, East Tennessee has historically been an outlier in Tennessee and the South. It is one of the few regions in the South that have consistently voted Republican Party (United States), Republican since the American Civil War, Civil War and one of the oldest Republican regions in the United States. Indeed, several counties in the region are among the few in the country to have never voted for a Democratic Party (United States), Democrat in a presidential election. The state's 1st and

congressional districts, anchored in the Tri-Cities and Knoxville respectively, are among the few ancestrally Republican regions in the South. The 1st has been held by Republicans or their predecessors without interruption since 1881, and for all but four years since 1859. The 2nd has been in the hands of Republicans or their predecessors since 1855. Until the 1950s, congressmen from the 1st and 2nd Districts were among the few truly senior Republican congressmen from the South. Historically, Democrats were more competitive in the Chattanooga-based Tennessee's 3rd congressional district, 3rd district, but recent trends have made it almost as staunchly Republican as the 1st and 2nd districts. East Tennessee Republican leanings are rooted in its antebellum Whig sentiments (historian O.P. Temple actually traces this sentiment back to the anti-aristocratic Covenanters of Scotland).Oliver Perry Temple, ''East Tennessee and the Civil War'' (Cincinnati: R. Clarke, 1972), pp. 15–17, 547, 556–8. As in much of southern Appalachia, the region's yeoman farmers clashed with the large-scale planters and business interests that controlled the Democratic Party and dominated most southern state legislatures. East Tennesseans revered the likes of John Sevier and Davy Crockett and were drawn to the political philosophies of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. They tended to reject the policies of the Southern Democrats, who were deemed "aristocratic" (Andrew Jackson's popularity in the Chattanooga area— which he helped open to European-American settlement— created a stronger Democratic base in southeastern Tennessee, however). In the early 1840s, state Senator Andrew Johnson actually introduced a bill in the state legislature that would have created a separate state in East Tennessee. While the Whigs disintegrated in the 1850s, East Tennesseans continued their opposition to Southern Democrats with the Opposition Party (Southern U.S.), Opposition Party and the Constitutional Union Party (United States), Constitutional Union Party, the latter capturing the state's electoral votes in 1860. Pro-Union sentiment during the Civil War (which was reinforced by the Confederate army's occupation of the region) evolved into support for President Abraham Lincoln. The congressmen from the 1st and 2nd districts were the only congressmen who did not resign when Tennessee seceded. The residents of those districts immediately identified with the Republicans after hostilities ceased and have supported the Republican Party ever since. The Radical Republican post-war policies of Governor Brownlow greatly polarized the state along party lines, with East Tennesseans mostly supporting Brownlow and Middle and West Tennesseans mostly rejecting him. The Southern Democrats regained control of the state government in the early 1870s, but Republican sentiment remained solid in East Tennessee, especially in the 1st and 2nd Districts. By the 1880s, the state's Democrats had an unwritten agreement with the state's Republicans whereby Republicans would split presidential patronage of Republican presidencies with the Democrats so long as the Democrats allowed them continued influence in state affairs. In 1888, Pennsylvania-born Henry Clay Evans was elected to the congressional seat for the 3rd District. Evans, who rejected compromise and the splitting of presidential patronage with the state's Democrats, strongly supported a bill that would have turned over control of state elections to the federal government. In response, the state legislature gerrymandering, gerrymandered the 3rd District, ensuring Evans' defeat in 1890.Phillip Langsdon, ''Tennessee: A Political History'' (Franklin, Tenn.: Hillsboro Press, 2000), pp. 218–219. After 1901, more than a half-century passed without the state legislature redistricting, in spite of population shifts. In 1959, Memphis resident Charles Baker sued the legislature in hopes of forcing it to redraw the districts, culminating in the landmark

case ''Baker v. Carr''. In the decades after this case, the 3rd District has been redrawn several times, and a new Tennessee's 4th congressional district, 4th District was carved in part out of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Districts. The 2000s round of redistricting made the 3rd more Republican and the 4th more Democratic.Dave Flessner
Lawmakers to Redraw Districts Based Upon 2010 Population
. ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'', May 20, 2009. Retrieved: August 27, 2009. After the 2010 elections and the redistricting before 2012, though, the Republicans in control of state government made both the 3rd and 4th Districts significantly more Republican, and both are now among the most Republican districts in the country.

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *

External links

East Tennessee Historical Society"Travel and Discover East Tennessee"
at the Convention and Visitors Bureau * {{Coord, 35.9, -84.1, display=title East Tennessee, Geography of Appalachia Regions of Tennessee State of Franklin