Knoxville is a city in and the
county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...
of
Knox County in the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
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 ...
.
As of the
2020 United States census
The United States census of 2020 was the twenty-fourth decennial United States census. Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2020. Other than a pilot study during the 2000 census, this was the first U.S. census to of ...
, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the
East Tennessee Grand Division and the state's third largest city after
Nashville and
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
.
[U.S. Census Bureau]
2010 Census Interactive Population Search
. Retrieved: December 20, 2011. Knoxville is the principal city of the
Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 869,046 in 2019.
First settled in 1786, Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee. The city struggled with geographic isolation throughout the early 19th century. The
arrival of the railroad in 1855 led to an economic boom.
The city was bitterly
divided over the secession issue 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 ...
and was occupied alternately by
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
and
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 ...
armies, culminating in 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 ...
in 1863.
Following the war, Knoxville grew rapidly as a major
wholesaling
Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...
and manufacturing center. The city's economy stagnated after
the 1920s as the
manufacturing sector collapsed, the
downtown area declined and city leaders became entrenched in highly partisan political fights.
Hosting the
1982 World's Fair
The 1982 World's Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE) and simply as Energy Expo '82 and Expo '82, was an international exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Focused on energy and ele ...
helped reinvigorate the city,
and
revitalization initiatives by city leaders and private developers have had major successes in spurring growth in the city, especially the
downtown area.
Knoxville is the home of the flagship campus of the
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...
, whose sports teams, the
Tennessee Volunteers
The Tennessee Volunteers and Lady Volunteers are the 20 male and female varsity intercollegiate athletics programs that represent the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Volunteers compete in Division I of the National Collegi ...
, are popular in the surrounding area. Knoxville is also home to the headquarters of 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 Carolin ...
, the
Tennessee Supreme Court
The Tennessee Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial tribunal of the state of Tennessee. Roger A. Page is the Chief Justice.
Unlike other states, in which the state attorney general is directly elected or appointed by the governor or state leg ...
's courthouse for
East Tennessee, and the corporate headquarters of several national and regional companies. As one of the largest cities in the
Appalachian region, Knoxville has positioned itself in recent years as a repository of
Appalachian culture
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, Can ...
and is one of the gateways to 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, w ...
.
History
Early history
The first people to form substantial settlements in what is now Knoxville were indigenous people who arrived during the
Woodland period ().
[Fletcher Jolly III, "40KN37: An Early Woodland Habitation Site in Knox County, Tennessee", ''Tennessee Archaeologist'' 31, nos. 1–2 (1976), 51.] One of the oldest artificial structures in Knoxville is a
burial mound
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
constructed during the early
Mississippian culture period (). The earthwork mound has been preserved, but the campus of the University of Tennessee developed around it.
Other prehistoric sites include an Early Woodland habitation area at the confluence of the Tennessee River and Knob Creek (near the Knox–Blount county line),
and
Dallas phase The Dallas phase (c. 1300–1600 CE) is an archaeological phase, within the Mississippian III period, in the South Appalachian Geologic province in North America.Sullivan and Prezzano 281
Geography
Dallas peoples moved into what is now southwest ...
Mississippian villages at Post Oak Island (also along the river near the Knox–Blount line), and at
Bussell Island (at the mouth of the
Little Tennessee River
The Little Tennessee River is a tributary of the Tennessee River that flows through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Georgia, into North Carolina, and then into Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It drains portions of three national ...
near Lenoir City).
By the 18th century, 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 ...
, an
Iroquoian language
The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian ...
people, had become the dominant tribe in the East Tennessee region; they are believed to have migrated centuries before from the Great Lakes area. They were consistently at war with the
Creek (who spoke
Muskogee) 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 ...
(who spoke Central
Algonquian). The Cherokee people called the Knoxville area ''kuwanda'talun'yi'', which means "Mulberry Place". Most Cherokee habitation in the area was concentrated in what the American colonists called the
Overhill settlements along the
Little Tennessee River
The Little Tennessee River is a tributary of the Tennessee River that flows through the Blue Ridge Mountains from Georgia, into North Carolina, and then into Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. It drains portions of three national ...
, southwest of Knoxville.
The first white traders and explorers were recorded as arriving in the Tennessee Valley in the late 17th century. There is significant evidence that Spanish explorer
Hernando de Soto visited Bussell Island in 1540. The first major recorded Euro-American presence in the Knoxville area was the
Timberlake Expedition
The Timberlake Expedition was an excursion into the Overhill Cherokee lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, which took place in 1761 following the Anglo-Cherokee War. Its purpose was to renew and solidify friendship between Colonial Americans ...
, which passed through the confluence of the Holston and French Broad into the Tennessee River in December 1761.
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 Briti ...
, an Anglo-American emissary from the
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th cent ...
to the Overhill settlements along the Little Tennessee River, recalled being pleased by the deep waters of the Tennessee after his party had struggled down the relatively shallow Holston for several weeks.
Settlement
![James White's Fort 20](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/James_White%27s_Fort_20.jpg)
The end of 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 ...
and confusion brought about by 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 Revoluti ...
led to a drastic increase in Euro-American settlement west of the Appalachians. By the 1780s, white settlers were already established in the Holston and French Broad valleys. The U.S. Congress ordered all illegal settlers out of the valley in 1785, but with little success. As settlers continued to trickle into Cherokee lands, tensions between the settlers and the Cherokee rose steadily.
In 1786,
James White, a
Revolutionary War officer, and his friend James Connor built
White's Fort near the mouth of First Creek, on land White had purchased three years earlier.
[Kim, ''The Sevierville Hill Site'', 9.] In 1790, White's son-in-law,
Charles McClung
Charles McClung (May 13, 1761 – August 9, 1835) was an American pioneer, politician, and surveyor best known for drawing up the original plat of Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1791. While Knoxville has since expanded to many times its original s ...
—who had arrived from Pennsylvania the previous year—surveyed White's holdings between First Creek and Second Creek for the establishment of a town. McClung drew up 64 lots. The waterfront was set aside for a town common. Two lots were set aside for a church and graveyard (First Presbyterian Church, founded 1792). Four lots were set aside for a school. That school was eventually chartered as Blount College and it served as the starting point for the
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...
, which uses Blount College's founding date of 1794, as its own. Also in 1790, 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 ...
appointed North Carolina surveyor
William Blount
William Blount (March 26, 1749March 21, 1800) was an American Founding Father, statesman, farmer and land speculator who signed the United States Constitution. He was a member of the North Carolina delegation at the Constitutional Convention o ...
governor of the newly created
Territory South of the River Ohio.
![Holstontreaty](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Holstontreaty.JPG)
One of Blount's first tasks was to meet with the Cherokee and establish territorial boundaries and resolve the issue of illegal settlers. This he accomplished almost immediately with the
Treaty of Holston
The Treaty of Holston (or Treaty of the Holston) was a treaty between the United States government and the Cherokee signed on July 2, 1791, and proclaimed on February 7, 1792. It was negotiated and signed by William Blount, governor of the South ...
, which was negotiated and signed at White's Fort in 1791. Blount originally wanted to place the territorial capital at the confluence of the
Clinch River
The Clinch River is a river that flows southwest for more than through the Great Appalachian Valley in the U.S. states of Virginia and Tennessee, gathering various tributaries, including the Powell River, before joining the Tennessee River in Ki ...
and Tennessee River (now
Kingston), but when the Cherokee refused to cede this land, Blount chose White's Fort, which McClung had surveyed the previous year. Blount named the new capital Knoxville after Revolutionary War general and Secretary of War
Henry Knox
Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806), a Founding Father of the United States, was a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in most of Washington's campaigns. Following the ...
, who at the time was Blount's immediate superior.
Problems immediately arose from the Holston Treaty. Blount believed that he had "purchased" much of what is now East Tennessee when the treaty was signed in 1791. However, the terms of the treaty came under dispute, culminating in continued violence on both sides. When the government invited Cherokee chief
Hanging Maw
Hanging Maw, or ''Uskwa'li-gu'ta'' in Cherokee, was the leading chief of the Overhill Cherokee from 1788 to 1794. They were located in present-day southeastern Tennessee. He became chief following the death of Old Tassel, and the abandonment of ...
for negotiations in 1793, Knoxville settlers attacked the Cherokee against orders, killing the chief's wife. Peace was renegotiated in 1794.
Antebellum era
![Craighead-Jackson House 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Craighead-Jackson_House_01.jpg)
Knoxville served as capital of the
Southwest Territory
The Territory South of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Southwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 26, 1790, until June 1, 1796, when it was admitted to the United States a ...
and as capital of Tennessee (admitted as a state in 1796) until 1817,
when the capital was moved to
Murfreesboro
Murfreesboro is a city in and county seat of Rutherford County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 152,769 according to the 2020 census, up from 108,755 residents certified in 2010. Murfreesboro is located in the Nashville metropol ...
. Early Knoxville has been described as an "alternately quiet and rowdy river town".
Early issues of the ''
Knoxville Gazette
The ''Knoxville Gazette'' was the first newspaper published in the U.S. state of Tennessee and the third published west of the Appalachian Mountains. Established by George Roulstone (1767–1804) at the urging of Southwest Territory governor W ...
''—the first newspaper published in Tennessee—are filled with accounts of murder, theft, and hostile Cherokee attacks. Abishai Thomas, a friend of William Blount, visited Knoxville in 1794 and wrote that, while he was impressed by the town's modern frame buildings, the town had "seven taverns" and no church.
Knoxville initially thrived as a way station for travelers and migrants heading west. Its location at the confluence of three major rivers in the Tennessee Valley brought
flatboat
A flatboat (or broadhorn) was a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with square ends used to transport freight and passengers on inland waterways in the United States. The flatboat could be any size, but essentially it was a large, sturdy tub with a ...
and later
steamboat traffic to its waterfront in the first half of the 19th century, and Knoxville quickly developed into a regional merchandising center. Local agricultural products—especially tobacco, corn, and whiskey—were traded for cotton, which was grown in the
Deep South.
The population of Knoxville more than doubled in the 1850s with the arrival of the
East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad
The East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad Company was incorporated under special act of Tennessee on February 19, 1836 as the Hiwassee Rail Road Company.Interstate Commerce Commission. ''Southern Ry. Co.'', Volume 37, Interstate Commerce Commission ...
in 1855.
'
Among the most prominent citizens of Knoxville during the Antebellum years was James White's son,
Hugh Lawson White
Hugh Lawson White (October 30, 1773April 10, 1840) was a prominent American politician during the first third of the 19th century. After filling in several posts particularly in Tennessee's judiciary and state legislature since 1801, thereunder ...
(1773–1840). White first served as a judge and state senator, before being nominated by the state legislature to replace
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
in the U.S. Senate in 1825. In 1836, White ran unsuccessfully for president, representing the Whig Party.
American Civil War
![Charles-douglas-shooting-1862](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Charles-douglas-shooting-1862.jpg)
Anti-slavery and anti-secession sentiment ran high in East Tennessee in the years leading up to 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 ...
.
William "Parson" Brownlow, the radical publisher of the
Knoxville Whig, was one of the region's leading anti-secessionists (although he strongly defended the practice of slavery). Blount County, just south of Knoxville, had developed into a center of abolitionist activity, due in part to its relatively large
Quaker faction and the anti-slavery president of
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 ...
, Isaac Anderson. The
Greater Warner Tabernacle AME Zion Church, Knoxville The Greater Warner Tabernacle AME Zion Church is a historic church congregation presently located in a building at 3800 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was reportedly a station on the Underground Railroad. It is part of th ...
was reportedly a station on the
underground railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. ...
.
Business interests, however, guided largely by Knoxville's trade connections with cotton-growing centers to the south, contributed to the development of a strong pro-secession movement within the city. The city's pro-secessionists included among their ranks Dr.
J. G. M. Ramsey, a prominent historian whose father had built the
Ramsey House in 1797.
Thus, while East Tennessee and greater Knox County voted decisively against secession in 1861, the city of Knoxville favored secession by a 2-1 margin. In late May 1861, just before the secession vote, delegates of the
East Tennessee Convention met at Temperance Hall in Knoxville in hopes of keeping Tennessee in 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 ...
. After Tennessee voted to secede in June, the convention met in
Greeneville and attempted to create a separate Union-aligned state in East Tennessee.
![SiegeofKnoxville](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/SiegeofKnoxville.jpg)
In July 1861, after Tennessee had joined the
Confederacy, General
Felix Zollicoffer
Felix Kirk Zollicoffer (May 19, 1812 – January 19, 1862) was an American newspaperman, slave owner, politician, and soldier. A three-term United States Congressman from Tennessee, an officer in the United States Army, and a Confederate brigad ...
arrived in Knoxville as commander of the District of East Tennessee. While initially lenient toward the city's Union sympathizers, Zollicoffer instituted
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 November, after pro-Union guerrillas
burned seven of the city's bridges. The command of the district passed briefly to
George Crittenden
George Bibb Crittenden (March 20, 1812 – November 27, 1880) was a career United States Army officer who served in the Black Hawk War, the Army of the Republic of Texas, and the Mexican–American War, and later resigned his commission to serv ...
and then to
Kirby Smith
General Edmund Kirby Smith (May 16, 1824March 28, 1893) was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army who commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department (comprising Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, western Louisiana, Arizona Territory and the Indi ...
, who launched an
unsuccessful invasion of Kentucky in August 1862. In early 1863, General
Simon Buckner took command of Confederate forces in Knoxville. Anticipating a Union invasion, Buckner fortified Fort Loudon (in West Knoxville, not to be confused with the
colonial fort to the southwest) and began constructing earthworks throughout the city. However, the approach of stronger Union forces under
Ambrose Burnside
Ambrose Everett Burnside (May 23, 1824 – September 13, 1881) was an American army officer and politician who became a senior Union general in the Civil War and three times Governor of Rhode Island, as well as being a successful inventor ...
in the summer of 1863 forced Buckner to evacuate Knoxville before the earthworks were completed.
Burnside arrived in early September 1863, beginning the
Knoxville Campaign. Like the Confederates, he immediately began fortifying the city. The Union forces rebuilt Fort Loudon and erected 12 other forts and batteries flanked by entrenchments around the city. Burnside moved a pontoon bridge upstream from
Loudon, allowing Union forces to cross the river and build a series of forts along the heights of South Knoxville, including Fort Stanley and Fort Dickerson.
As Burnside was fortifying Knoxville, a Confederate army 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 Western ...
defeated Union forces under
William S. Rosecrans
William Starke Rosecrans (September 6, 1819March 11, 1898) was an American inventor, coal-oil company executive, diplomat, politician, and U.S. Army officer. He gained fame for his role as a Union general during the American Civil War. He was ...
at the
Battle of Chickamauga
The Battle of Chickamauga, fought on September 19–20, 1863, between U.S. and Confederate forces in the American Civil War, marked the end of a Union offensive, the Chickamauga Campaign, in southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. I ...
(near the Tennessee-Georgia line) and laid siege to
Chattanooga. On November 3, 1863, the Confederates sent General
James Longstreet to attack Burnside at Knoxville and prevent him from reinforcing the Union at Chattanooga. Longstreet wanted to attack the city from the south, but lacking the necessary pontoon bridges, he was forced to cross the river further downstream at Loudon (November 14) and march against the city's heavily fortified western section. On November 15, General
Joseph Wheeler
Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler (September 10, 1836 – January 25, 1906) was an American military commander and politician. He was a cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and then a general in ...
unsuccessfully attempted to dislodge Union forces in the heights of South Knoxville, and the following day Longstreet failed to cut off retreating Union forces at the
Battle of Campbell's Station
The Battle of Campbell's Station (November 16, 1863) saw Confederate forces under Lieutenant General James Longstreet attack Union troops led by Major General Ambrose Burnside at Campbell's Station (now Farragut), Knox County, Tennessee, dur ...
(now
Farragut). On November 18, Union General
William P. Sanders was mortally wounded while conducting delaying maneuvers west of Knoxville, and Fort Loudon was renamed Fort Sanders in his honor. On November 29, following a two-week siege, the Confederates
attacked Fort Sanders, but failed after a fierce 20-minute engagement. On December 4, after word of the Confederate
defeat at Chattanooga reached Longstreet, he broke his siege of Knoxville and went into winter quarters at
Russellville. He rejoined the
Army of Northern Virginia
The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was also the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most oft ...
the following spring. The Union victory in the Knoxville Campaign and at Chattanooga put much of East Tennessee under Union control for the rest of the war.
Reconstruction and the Industrial Age
![Knoxville-republic-quarry](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Knoxville-republic-quarry.jpg)
After the war, northern investors such as brothers Joseph and David Richards helped Knoxville recover relatively quickly. The Richards brothers convinced 104
Welsh immigrant families to migrate from the
Welsh Tract in
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
to work in a rolling mill then co-owned by Thomas Walker. These Welsh families settled in an area now known as
Mechanicsville.
[The Old Atkin Street Church and Knoxville's Welsh Community]
. Originally published in the ''Knoxville Journal and Tribune''. Retrieved: 7 September 2010. The Richards brothers also co-founded the Knoxville Iron Works beside the
L&N Railroad
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad , commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States.
Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of the ...
, also employing Welsh workers. Later, the site was used as the grounds for the
1982 World's Fair
The 1982 World's Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE) and simply as Energy Expo '82 and Expo '82, was an international exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Focused on energy and ele ...
.
![Knoxville-knitting-works-1910](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Knoxville-knitting-works-1910.jpg)
Other companies that sprang up during this period were Knoxville Woolen Mills, Dixie Cement, and Woodruff's Furniture. Between 1880 and 1887, 97 factories were established in Knoxville, most of them specializing in textiles, food products, and iron products.
[William Bruce Wheeler, "Knoxville, Tennessee". ''The Encyclopedia of Appalachia'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 375.] By the 1890s, Knoxville was home to more than 50 wholesaling houses, making it the third largest wholesaling center by volume in the South.
[ The Candoro Marble Works, established in the community of Vestal in 1914, became the nation's foremost producer of pink marble and one of the nation's largest marble importers. In 1896, Knoxville celebrated its achievements by creating its own flag. The Flag of Knoxville, Tennessee represents the city's progressive growth due to agriculture and industry.
In 1869, Thomas Humes, a Union sympathizer and president of East Tennessee University, secured federal post-war damage reimbursement and state-designated ]Morrill Act
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or s ...
funding to expand the college, which had been occupied by both armies during the war. Charles Dabney, who became president of the university in 1887, overhauled the faculty and established a law school in an attempt to modernize the scope of the university. In 1879, the state changed its name to the University of Tennessee, at the request of the trustees, who hoped to secure more funding from the Tennessee state legislature.[Milton Klein,]
University of Tennessee
". ''The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, 2002. Retrieved: February 28, 2008.''
The post-war manufacturing boom brought thousands of immigrants to the city. The population of Knoxville grew from around 5,000 in 1860 to 32,637 in 1900. West Knoxville was annexed in 1897, and over 5,000 new homes were built between 1895 and 1904.[W. Bruce Wheeler,]
Knoxville
". ''The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: February 28, 2008.
In 1901, train robber Kid Curry
Harvey Alexander Logan (1867 – June 17, 1904), also known as Kid Curry, was an American outlaw and gunman who rode with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's infamous Wild Bunch gang during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite being ...
(whose real name was Harvey Logan), a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch
The Wild Bunch, also known as the Doolin–Dalton Gang, or the Oklahombres, were a gang of American outlaws based in the Indian Territory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were active in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma Terr ...
was captured after shooting two deputies on Knoxville's Central Avenue. He escaped from the Knoxville Jail and rode away on a horse stolen from the sheriff.
The Progressive Era and the Great Depression
Knoxville hosted the Appalachian Exposition in 1910 and 1911 and the National Conservation Exposition
The National Conservation Exposition was an exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, between September 1, 1913 and November 1, 1913. The exposition celebrated the cause of bringing national attention to conservation activities, espe ...
in 1913. The latter is sometimes credited with giving rise to the movement to create a national park in the Great Smoky Mountains, some south of Knoxville.[Jack Neely, "Knoxville, Tennessee". ''The Encyclopedia of Appalachia'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 654.] Around this time, a number of affluent Knoxvillians began purchasing summer cottages in Elkmont and began to pursue the park idea more vigorously. They were led by Knoxville businessman Colonel David C. Chapman
David Carpenter Chapman (August 9, 1876 – July 26, 1944) was an American soldier, politician, and business leader from Knoxville, Tennessee who led the effort to establish the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1920s and 1930s. Mou ...
, who, as head of the Great Smoky Mountains Park Commission, was largely responsible for raising the funds for the purchase of the property that became the core of the 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, w ...
opened in 1933.
Knoxville's reliance on a manufacturing economy left it particularly vulnerable to the effects of the Great Depression. The Tennessee Valley also suffered from frequent flooding, and millions of acres of farmland had been ruined by soil erosion. To control flooding and improve the economy in the Tennessee Valley, the federal government created 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 Carolin ...
in 1933. Beginning with Norris Dam
Norris Dam is a hydroelectric and flood control structure located on the Clinch River in Anderson County and Campbell County, Tennessee, United States. The dam was the first major project for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had been create ...
, TVA constructed a series of hydroelectric and other power plants throughout the valley over the next few decades, bringing flood control, jobs, and electricity to the region.[W. Bruce Wheeler,]
Tennessee Valley Authority
". ''The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002. Retrieved: February 28, 2008. The Federal Works Projects Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
, which also arrived in the 1930s, helped build McGhee-Tyson Airport
McGhee Tyson Airport is a public/military airport 12 miles south of Knoxville,. Federal Aviation Administration. effective November 15, 2012. in Alcoa, Blount County, Tennessee, United States. It is named for United States Navy pilot Charles Mc ...
and expand Neyland Stadium
Neyland Stadium ( ), is a sports stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It serves primarily as the home of the Tennessee Volunteers football team, but is also used to host large conventions and has been a site for several National Foot ...
. TVA's headquarters, which consists of two twin high rises built in the 1970s, were among Knoxville's first modern high-rise buildings.
In 1947, John Gunther
John Gunther (August 30, 1901 – May 29, 1970) was an American journalist and writer.
His success came primarily by a series of popular sociopolitical works, known as the "Inside" books (1936–1972), including the best-selling ''Insid ...
dubbed Knoxville the "ugliest city" in America in his best-selling book '' Inside U.S.A.'' Gunther's description jolted the city into enacting a series of beautification measures that helped improve the appearance of the Downtown area.
1982 World's Fair and 20th century
Knoxville's textile and manufacturing industries largely fell victim to foreign competition in the 1950s and 1960s, and after the establishment of the Interstate Highway system in the 1960s, the railroad—which had been largely responsible for Knoxville's industrial growth—began to decline. The rise of suburban shopping malls in the 1970s drew retail revenues away from Knoxville's downtown area. While government jobs and economic diversification prevented widespread unemployment in Knoxville, the city sought to recover the massive loss of revenue by attempting to annex neighboring communities. Knoxville would successfully annex the communities of Bearden and Fountain City, which were Knoxville's biggest suburbs prior to their annexations in 1962. Knoxville officials would attempt the annexation of the neighboring Farragut-Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
community in West Knox County, but would fail following the incorporation of Farragut in 1980. These annexation attempts often turned combative, and several attempts to consolidate Knoxville and Knox County into a metro government failed, while school boards and the planning commissions would merge on July 1, 1987.[
]
With further annexation attempts stalling, Knoxville initiated several projects aimed at boosting revenue in its downtown area. The 1982 World's Fair
The 1982 World's Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE) and simply as Energy Expo '82 and Expo '82, was an international exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Focused on energy and ele ...
—the most successful of these projects, with eleven million visitors—became one of the most popular expositions in U.S. history. The fair's energy theme was selected due to Knoxville being the headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority and for the city's proximity to the 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 an ...
. The Sunsphere
The Sunsphere located in World’s Fair Park in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, is a high hexagonal steel truss structure, topped with a gold-colored glass sphere that served as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair.
Design
Designed by the Knox ...
, a steel truss structure topped with a gold-colored glass sphere, was built for the fair and remains one of Knoxville's most prominent structures, along with the adjacent Tennessee Amphitheater
The Tennessee Amphitheater, also known as the World's Fair Park Amphitheater, is an open-air amphitheater located in the 1982 World's Fair Park in Knoxville, Tennessee.
History
The Tennessee Amphitheater was built for 1982 World's Fair and was d ...
which underwent a renovation that was completed in 2008.
During the 1980s and into the 1990s, the city would see one of its largest expansions of its city limits, with a reported 26 square miles of " shoestring annexation" under the administration of Mayor Victor Ashe
The name Victor or Viktor may refer to:
* Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname
Arts and entertainment
Film
* ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film
* ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...
. Ashe's efforts would be controversial, largely consisting of annexation of interstate right-of-ways, highway-oriented commercial clusters, and residential subdivisions to increase tax revenue for the city. Residents would voice opposition, citing claims of urban sprawl
Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city." Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growt ...
and government overreach.
21st century and economic renaissance
With the dawn of the 21st century, Knoxville's downtown has been developing, with the opening of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame
The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame honors those who have contributed to the sport of women's basketball. The Hall of Fame opened in 1999 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. It is the only facility of its kind dedicated to all levels of women's ba ...
and the Knoxville Convention Center, the redevelopment of Market Square, a new visitors center, a regional history museum, a 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 ...
theater, several restaurants and bars, and many new and redeveloped condominiums. Since 2000, Knoxville has successfully brought business back to the downtown area. The arts in particular have begun to flourish; there are multiple venues for outdoor concerts, and Gay Street hosts a new arts annex and gallery surrounded by many studios and new businesses as well. The Bijou
Bijou is a French word meaning ''jewel'', often loosely applied to buildings to mean small and elegant. It may also refer to:
Buildings
* Bijou Palace, also known as the Al-Gawhara Palace, a palace in Cairo, Egypt
* Bijou Theatre (Manhattan), two ...
and Tennessee Theatres underwent renovation, providing an initiative for the city and its developers to re-purpose the old downtown.
Development has also expanded across the Tennessee River on the South Knoxville waterfront. In 2006, the City of Knoxville adopted the South Waterfront Vision Plan, a long-term improvement project to revitalize the 750 acre waterfront fronting three miles of shoreline on the Tennessee River. The project's primary focus is the commercial and residential development over a 20-year timeline. The former Knoxville Baptist Hospital, located on the waterfront, was demolished in 2016 to make for mixed-use project called One Riverwalk. The development consisted of three office buildings, including a new headquarters for Regal Entertainment Group
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 ...
, a hotel, student housing, and 300 multi-family residential units.
In June 2020, the Knoxville City Council announced the investment of over $5.5million dollars in federal and local funds towards the development of a business park
A business park or office park is a designated area of land in which many office buildings are grouped together. These types of developments are often located in suburban areas where land and building costs are more affordable, and are typicall ...
along the Interstate 275 corridor in North Knoxville. The project was first proposed by a study prepared Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission in 2007.
In August 2020, UT President and Tennessee Smokies
The Tennessee Smokies are a Minor League Baseball team based in Kodak, Tennessee, a suburb of Knoxville. The team, which plays in the Southern League, is the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. They play at Smokies Stadium, directly off ...
owner Randy Boyd announced plans of a mixed-use
Mixed-use is a kind of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning type that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to som ...
baseball stadium
A ballpark, or baseball park, is a type of sports venue where baseball is played. The playing field is divided into the infield, an area whose dimensions are rigidly defined, and the outfield, where dimensions can vary widely from place to pla ...
complex in the Old City neighborhood of Knoxville.
Geography
Topography
According to the United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of t ...
, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 5.42%, is water. Elevations range from just over along the riverfront to just over on various hilltops in West Knoxville, with the downtown area resting at just over . High points include Sharp's Ridge
Sharp's Ridge is a steep ridge in Knoxville, Tennessee, north of the city's downtown. A area of the ridge is maintained as Sharp's Ridge Memorial Park, a city park dedicated to the honor of the area's war veterans. The ridge also is the site o ...
in North Knoxville at and Brown Mountain in South Knoxville at . House Mountain, the highest point in Knox County at , is located east of the city near Mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...
.
Knoxville is situated in the Great Appalachian Valley
The Great Appalachian Valley, also called The Great Valley or Great Valley Region, is one of the major landform features of eastern North America. It is a gigantic trough—a chain of valley lowlands—and the central feature of the Appalachian M ...
(known locally as the Tennessee Valley), about halfway between the Great Smoky Mountains
The Great Smoky Mountains (, ''Equa Dutsusdu Dodalv'') are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains, and form part of the Blue Ridge ...
to the east and the Cumberland Plateau to the west. The Great Valley is part of a sub-range of 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 ...
known as the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians
The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division and are also a belt within the Appalachian Mountains extending ...
, which is characterized by long, narrow ridges, flanked by broad valleys. Prominent Ridge-and-Valley structures in the Knoxville area include Sharp's Ridge and Beaver Ridge in the northern part of the city, Brown Mountain in South Knoxville, parts of 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 som ...
just south of the city, and parts of McAnnally Ridge in the northeastern part of the city.
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 name ...
, which slices through the downtown area, is formed in southeastern Knoxville at the confluence of the Holston River
The Holston River is a river that flows from Kingsport, Tennessee, to Knoxville, Tennessee. Along with its three major forks (North Fork, Middle Fork and South Fork), it comprises a major river system that drains much of northeastern Tennessee, ...
, which flows southwest from Virginia, and the French Broad River
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 form ...
, which flows west from North Carolina. The section of the Tennessee River that passes through Knoxville is part of Fort Loudoun Lake, an artificial reservoir created by TVA's Fort Loudoun Dam
Fort Loudoun Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Loudon County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The dam is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built the dam in the early 1940s as part of a unif ...
about downstream in Lenoir City. Notable tributaries of the Tennessee in Knoxville include First Creek and Second Creek, which flow through the downtown area, Third Creek, which flows west of U.T., and Sinking Creek, Ten Mile Creek, and Turkey Creek, which drain West Knoxville.
Climate
Knoxville falls in the humid subtropical climate (Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer
* Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan
* Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...
: ''Cfa''). Summers are hot and humid, with the daily average temperature in July at , and an average of 36 days per year with temperatures reaching .[NOAA](_blank)
, Mean Number of Days With Maximum Temperature 90 Degrees F or Higher. Winters are generally much cooler and less stable, with occasional small amounts of snow. January has a daily average temperature of , although in most years there is at least one day (average 5.3) where the high remains at or below freezing. The record high for Knoxville is on June 30 and July 1, 2012, while the record low is on January 21, 1985. Annual precipitation averages just under , and normal seasonal snowfall is . Usually no snow occurs outside of January and February. The one-day record for snowfall is , which occurred on February 13, 1960.
Metropolitan Area
Knoxville is the central city in the Knoxville Metropolitan Area, an Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-designated metropolitan statistical area (MSA) that covers Knox, Anderson
Anderson or Andersson may refer to:
Companies
* Anderson (Carriage), a company that manufactured automobiles from 1907 to 1910
* Anderson Electric, an early 20th-century electric car
* Anderson Greenwood, an industrial manufacturer
* Anderson ...
, Blount, Campbell, 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 ...
, Loudon, Morgan, Roane and 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 ...
counties. MSAs consist of a core urban center and the outlying communities and rural areas with which it maintains close economic ties. They are not administrative divisions, and should not be confused with a consolidated city-county government, which Knoxville and Knox County is absent of.
The Knoxville Metropolitan area includes unincorporated communities such as Halls Crossroads, Powell, Karns, Corryton, Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
, and Mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...
, which are located in Knox County outside of Knoxville's city limits. Along with Knoxville, major municipalities in the Knoxville Metropolitan Area include Alcoa, Blaine, Maryville, Lenoir City, Loudon, Farragut, Oak Ridge, Rutledge, Clinton, Bean Station, and Maynardville. As of 2012, the population of the Knoxville Metropolitan Area was 837,571.[Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas]
, U.S. Census Bureau
Additionally, the Knoxville MSA is the chief component of the larger OMB-designated Knoxville
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...
-Sevierville-LaFollette, Tennessee, La Follette Tennessee, TN Combined Statistical Area (CSA). The CSA also includes the Morristown, Tennessee, Morristown Morristown metropolitan area, Metropolitan Statistical Area (Hamblen County, Tennessee, Hamblen, 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 ...
, and Jefferson County, Tennessee, Jefferson counties) and the Sevierville, Tennessee, Sevierville (Sevier County, Tennessee, Sevier County), La Follette, Tennessee, La Follette (Campbell County, Tennessee, Campbell County), Harriman, Tennessee, Harriman (Roane County, Tennessee, Roane County), and Newport, Tennessee, Newport (Cocke County, Tennessee, Cocke County) Micropolitan Statistical Areas. Municipalities in the CSA, but not the Knoxville MSA, include Morristown, Rutledge, Dandridge, Tennessee, Dandridge, Jefferson City, Tennessee, Jefferson City, Sevierville, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Pigeon Forge, LaFollette, Jacksboro, Tennessee, Jacksboro, Harriman, Kingston, Rockwood, Tennessee, Rockwood, and Newport. The combined population of the CSA as of the 2000 Census was 935,659. Its estimated 2008 population was 1,041,955.[
Georgia Tech researchers have mapped the Knoxville Metropolitan area as one of the 18 'Major Cities' in the Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion.
]
Cityscape
Architecture
Knoxville's two tallest buildings are the 27-story First Tennessee Plaza and the 24-story Riverview Tower, both on Gay Street. Other prominent high-rises include the Tower at Morgan Hill (21 stories), the Andrew Johnson Building (18), the Knoxville Hilton (18), the General Building (15), the The Holston, Holston (14), the TVA Towers (12), and Sterchi Lofts (12). The city's most iconic structure is arguably the Sunsphere
The Sunsphere located in World’s Fair Park in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, is a high hexagonal steel truss structure, topped with a gold-colored glass sphere that served as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair.
Design
Designed by the Knox ...
, a steel truss tower built for the 1982 World's Fair and, with the Tennessee Amphitheater
The Tennessee Amphitheater, also known as the World's Fair Park Amphitheater, is an open-air amphitheater located in the 1982 World's Fair Park in Knoxville, Tennessee.
History
The Tennessee Amphitheater was built for 1982 World's Fair and was d ...
, one of only two structures that remain from that World's Fair.
The downtown area contains a mixture of architectural styles from various periods, ranging from the hewn-log James White House (1786) to the modern Knoxville Museum of Art (1990). Styles represented include Greek Revival architecture, Greek Revival (Old City Hall (Knoxville), Old City Hall), Victorian (Hotel St. Oliver and Sullivan's Saloon), Gothic (Church Street Methodist Church (Knoxville, Tennessee), Church Street Methodist Church and Ayres Hall), Neoclassical architecture, Neoclassical (First Baptist Church), and Art Deco (United States Post Office and Courthouse (Knoxville, Tennessee), Knoxville Post Office). Gay Street, Market Square, and Jackson Avenue contain numerous examples of late-19th and early-20th century commercial architecture.
Residential architecture tends to reflect the city's development over two centuries. Blount Mansion (1791), in the oldest part of the city, is designed in a vernacular Georgian architecture, Georgian style. "Streetcar suburbs" such as Fourth and Gill, Parkridge (Knoxville, Tennessee), Parkridge, and Fort Sanders (Knoxville neighborhood), Fort Sanders, developed in the late 19th century with the advent of streetcar, trolleys, tend to contain large concentrations of Victorian and Bungalow/American Craftsman, Craftsman-style houses popular during this period. Early automobile suburbs, such as Lindbergh Forest and Sequoyah Hills, Tennessee, Sequoyah Hills, contain late-1920s and 1930s styles such as Tudor Revival architecture, Tudor Revival, English Cottage, and Mission Revival. Neighborhoods developed after World War II typically consist of Ranch-style houses.
Knoxville is home to the nation's largest concentration of homes designed by noted Victorian residential architect George Franklin Barber, who lived in the city. Other notable local architects include members of the Baumann family (architects), Baumann family, Charles I. Barber (son of George), R. F. Graf, and more recently, Bruce McCarty. Nationally renowned architects with works still standing in the city include Alfred B. Mullett (Greystone (Knoxville), Greystone), John Russell Pope (H.L. Dulin House), and Edward Larrabee Barnes (Knoxville Museum of Art).
Neighborhoods
Knoxville is roughly divided into the Downtown Knoxville, Downtown area and sections based on the four cardinal directions: North Knoxville, South Knoxville, East Knoxville, and West Knoxville. Downtown Knoxville traditionally consists of the area bounded by the river on the south, First Creek on the east, Second Creek on the west, and the railroad tracks on the north, though the definition has expanded to include the U.T. campus and Fort Sanders neighborhood, and several neighborhoods along or just off Broadway south of Sharp's Ridge ("Downtown North"). While primarily home to the city's central business district and municipal offices, the Old City and Gay Street are mixed residential and commercial areas.
South Knoxville consists of the parts of the city located south of the river,[City of Knoxville]
Parks
. Retrieved: January 7, 2012. and includes the neighborhoods of Vestal, Lindbergh Forest, Island Home Park, Colonial Hills, and Old Sevier. This area contains major commercial corridors along Chapman Highway and Alcoa Highway.
West Knoxville generally consists of the areas west of U.T., and includes the suburban neighborhoods of Sequoyah Hills, Tennessee, Sequoyah Hills, West Hills (Knoxville, Tennessee), West Hills, Bearden (Knoxville, Tennessee), Bearden, Cumberland Estates, Westmoreland, Suburban Hills, Cedar Bluff, Knoxville, Cedar Bluff, Rocky Hill, Knoxville, Rocky Hill, and Ebenezer. This area, concentrated largely around Kingston Pike, is home to thriving retail centers such as West Town Mall and Turkey Creek, Knoxville, Turkey Creek.
East Knoxville consists of the areas east of First Creek and the James White Parkway and includes the neighborhoods of Parkridge, Burlington, Morningside, and Five Points. This area, concentrated along Magnolia Avenue, is home to Chilhowee Park and Zoo Knoxville.
North Knoxville consists of the areas north of Sharp's Ridge, namely the Fountain City and Inskip-Norwood areas. This area's major commercial corridor is located along Broadway.
List of notable neighborhoods
* Bearden (Knoxville, Tennessee), Bearden
* Cedar Bluff, Knoxville, Cedar Bluff
* Chilhowee Park (neighborhood), Chilhowee Park
* Colonial Village (Knoxville, Tennessee), Colonial Village
* Cumberland Estates
* Downtown Knoxville, Downtown
* Emory Place Historic District, Emory Place
* Fort Sanders (Knoxville neighborhood), Fort Sanders
* Fountain City, Tennessee, Fountain City
** Oakland neighborhood, Knoxville, Tennessee, Oakland (former)
* Fourth & Gill (Knoxville, Tennessee), Fourth & Gill
* Island Home Park
* Lindbergh Forest
* Lonsdale (Knoxville, Tennessee), Lonsdale
* Mechanicsville
* North Hills Historic District, North Hills
* Oakwood-Lincoln Park, Knoxville, Tennessee, Oakwood-Lincoln Park
* Old City Knoxville, Old City
* Old North Knoxville
* Parkridge (Knoxville, Tennessee), Parkridge
* Rocky Hill (Knoxville, Tennessee), Rocky Hill
* Sequoyah Hills, Tennessee, Sequoyah Hills
* South Knoxville
* West Hills (Knoxville, Tennessee), West Hills
Important suburbs
* Alcoa
* Blaine
* Clinton
* Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
* Corryton
* Dandridge, Tennessee, Dandridge
* Farragut
* Halls Crossroads
* Hardin Valley, Tennessee, Hardin Valley
* Heiskell, Tennessee, Heiskell
* Karns
* Lenoir City
* Louisville, Tennessee, Louisville
* Maryville
* Mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...
* Maynardville
* Oak Ridge
* Powell
* Sevierville, Tennessee, Sevierville
* Seymour, Tennessee, Seymour
* Strawberry Plains, Tennessee, Strawberry Plains
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census
The United States census of 2020 was the twenty-fourth decennial United States census. Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2020. Other than a pilot study during the 2000 census, this was the first U.S. census to of ...
, there were 190,740 people, 83,492 households, and 40,405 families residing in the city.
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, the population of Knoxville was 178,874, a 2.9% increase from 2000.[U.S. Census Bureau]
QuickFacts sheet for Knoxville (city), Tennessee
. Retrieved: December 20, 2011. The median age was 32.7, with 19.1% of the population under the age of 18, and 12.6% over the age of 65. The population was 48% male and 52% female. The population density was 1,815 persons per square mile.
The racial and ethnic composition of the city was 76.1% White (U.S. Census), white, 17.1% African American (U.S. Census), black, 0.4% Native American (U.S. Census), Native American, 1.6% Asian (U.S. Census), Asian, and 0.2% Pacific Islander (U.S. Census), Pacific Islander. Hispanic (U.S. Census), Hispanic or Latino (U.S. Census), Latino of any race were 4.6% of the population. People reporting more than one race formed 2.5% of the population.
Data collected by the Census from 2005 to 2009 reported 83,151 households in Knoxville, with an average of 2.07 persons per household. The home ownership rate was 51%, and 74.7% of residents had been living in the same house for more than one year. The median household income was $32,609, and the per capita income was $21,528. High school graduates were 83.8% of persons 25 and older, and 28.3% had earned a bachelor's degree or higher. The city's poverty rate was 25%, compared with 16.1% in Tennessee and 15.1% nationwide.
According to the opinion of the Economic Research Institute in a 2006 study, Knoxville was identified as the most affordable U.S. city for new college graduates, based on the ratio of typical salary to cost of living. In 2014, ''Forbes'' ranked Knoxville one of the top five most affordable cities in the United States.
Crime
Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Uniform Crime Reports for Knoxville for 2017:
Economy
After the arrival of the railroads in the 1850s, Knoxville grew to become a major wholesaling and manufacturing center. Following the collapse of the city's textile industry in the 1950s, Knoxville's economy grew more diversified. In 2011, 15.9% of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area's (MSA) work force was employed by government entities, while 14.1% were employed in the professional service sector, 14% worked in education or health care, 12.7% were employed in the retail sector, 10.5% worked in leisure and hospitality, and 8.9% worked in the manufacturing sector. The region had an unemployment rate of 7.9% in 2011.
In the 2010 ACCRA Cost of Living Index, Knoxville was rated 89.6 (the national average was 100). Kiplinger ranked Knoxville at No. 5 in its list of ''Best Value Cities 2011'' citing "college sports, the Smoky Mountains and an entrepreneurial spirit". In April 2008, ''Forbes'' magazine named Knoxville among the Top 10 Metropolitan Hotspots in the United States, and within Forbes's Top5 for Business & Careers, just behind cities like New York City, New York and Los Angeles.
In 2007, there were over 19,000 registered businesses in Knoxville. The city's businesses are served by the 2,100-member Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership. The Knoxville Chamber is one of six partners in the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, which promotes economic development in Knox and surrounding counties.
Major corporations
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 Carolin ...
(TVA), the nation's largest public power provider, is a federally owned corporation headquartered in Knoxville. TVA reported $10.5billion in revenue in 2021 and employs over 12,000 region-wide.
The largest company based in Knoxville is privately held Pilot Flying J, the nation's largest truck stop chain and sixth largest private company, which reported over $29.23billion in revenue in 2012. Knoxville is also home to the nation's fourth largest wholesale grocer, The H. T. Hackney Company, which reported $3.8billion in revenue in 2012, and one of the nation's largest digital-centric advertising firms, Tombras Group, which reported $80million in revenue in 2011. Other notable privately held companies based in the city include Bush Brothers and Company, Bush Brothers, Sea Ray (and its parent company, Brunswick Boat Group), Thermocopy, Petro's Chili & Chips, EdFinancial Services, EdFinancial, 21st Mortgage and AC Entertainment. Also based in Knoxville are movie theater chain Regal Cinemas,[Knoxville-Area Public Companies Ranked According to Revenue]
, Knoxville Book of Lists (''Knoxville News Sentinel''), 2012. Retrieved: January 14, 2012. major operations of Discovery, Inc. (which acquired Scripps Networks Interactive), and health care-staffing firm TeamHealth.
Major companies located within the Knoxville MSA include Clayton Homes and Ruby Tuesday (restaurant), Ruby Tuesday (both in Maryville), and DeRoyal and Weigel's (both in Powell).
Real estate
As of 2011, the median price for a home in the Knoxville MSA was $140,900, compared with $173,300 nationally.[Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission]
Facts & Figures 2011
. Retrieved: January 14, 2012. The average apartment rental was $658 per month. In March 2009, CNN ranked Knoxville as the 59th city in the top 100 US metro areas in terms of real estate price depreciation.
The Knoxville area is home to 596 office buildings which contain over 21million square feet of office space. As of 2010, the average rental rate per square foot was $14.79. The city's largest office building in terms of office space is the Knoxville City-County Building, City-County Building, which has over 537,000 square feet of office space. The First Tennessee Plaza and the Riverview Tower were the largest privately owned office buildings, with 469,672 square feet and 367,000 square feet, respectively.
Knoxville's largest industrial park is the Forks of the River Industrial Park in southeastern Knoxville. Other major industrial and business parks include the EastBridge Industrial Park and Midway Business Park in eastern Knox County and the WestBridge Industrial Park in western Knox County.
Finance
The largest bank operating in Knoxville in terms of local deposits is Memphis-based First Tennessee, with $2.6billion in local deposits, representing about 16% of Knoxville's banking market. It is followed by Charlotte-based Truist Financial ($2.5billion), Birmingham-based Regions Financial Corporation, Regions Bank ($1.9billion), and locally headquartered Home Federal Bank of Tennessee ($1.6billion).[Knoxville Area Banks Ranked According to Local Deposits]
, Knoxville Book of Lists (''Knoxville News Sentinel''), 2012. Retrieved: January 11, 2012. Other banks with significant operations in the city include Bank of America, First Bank (based in Lexington, Tennessee), and locally owned Clayton Bank and Trust.
Major brokerage firms with offices in Knoxville include Edward Jones Investments, Edward Jones, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Wells Fargo, and Merrill Lynch. As of 2011, Knox County's largest mortgage lender (by dollar volume) was Wells Fargo with over $300million (13% of the local market), followed by Mortgage Investors Group, SunTrust, Regions, and Home Federal. Knoxville's largest accounting firm as of 2012 is Pershing Yoakley & Associates, with 49 local certified public accountant, CPAs, followed by Coulter & Justus (44), and Pugh CPA's(43).
Manufacturing
Over 700 manufacturing establishments are scattered throughout the Knoxville area. Sea Ray Boats is the city's largest manufacturer, employing 760 at its southeast Knoxville complex in 2009.[Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley, [www.knoxvillechamber.com/pdf/demographics/MajorManufacturers.doc Top 50 Major Manufacturers in the Knoxville Area—2009]. Retrieved: January 14, 2012.] The city is home to several automobile parts operations, including ARC Automotive (air bag actuators) and a Key Safety Systems plant (seat belts and other restraints). Other major manufacturing operations include a Melaleaca plant (personal care products), a Coca-Cola bottling plant, and a Gerdau, Gerdau Ameristeel plant that produces steel rebar. Aircraft manufacturer Cirrus Aircraft, Cirrus also has its main customer delivery center based in Knoxville, that deals with aircraft maintenance & repair, flight training, and design personalization. Major manufacturing operations in the Knoxville MSA are conducted at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, the DENSO plant and the Clayton Homes manufacturing center (both in Maryville), and the ALCOA plants in Alcoa.
Retail
The Knoxville area is home to 182 shopping centers and factory outlets, and over 2,400 retail establishments. One regional mall (West Town Mall) is located within the city, and two others (Foothills Mall (Tennessee), Foothills Mall in Maryville and Oak Ridge City Center in Oak Ridge) are located within the Knoxville MSA. Knoxville retailers reported $6.47billion in sales in 2007, with just over $35,000 of retail sales per capita.
Knoxville's primary retail corridor is located along Kingston Pike in West Knoxville. This area is home to West Town Mall, the 358-acre Turkey Creek (Tennessee), Turkey Creek complex (half is in Knoxville and half is Farragut), and over 30 shopping centers. Downtown Knoxville contains a number of specialty shops, clubs, and dining areas, mostly concentrated in the Old City, Market Square, and along Gay Street. Other significant retail areas are located along Cumberland Avenue on the U.T. campus (mostly restaurants), Broadway in the vicinity of Fountain City, and Chapman Highway in South Knoxville.
Technology and research
The University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...
is classified by the Carnegie Commission as a university with "very high research activity", conducting more than $300million in externally funded research annually.[About UT-Battelle]
. Retrieved: January 14, 2012. U.T.-connected research centers with multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation grants include the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics, the National Institute for Computational Sciences, the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, and the Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks (CURENT). U.T. and the nearby 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 an ...
jointly conduct numerous research projects and co-manage the National Transportation Research Center.
The Tennessee Technology Corridor stretches across between West Knoxville and Oak Ridge. The Corridor is home to 13 research and development firms employing nearly 2,000.
Culture
Knoxville is home to a rich arts community and has many festivals throughout the year. Its contributions to old-time, bluegrass and country music are numerous, from Flatt & Scruggs and Homer & Jethro to the Everly Brothers.
The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra (KSO), established in 1935, is the oldest continuing orchestra in the southeast. The KSO maintains a core of full-time professional musicians, and performs at more than 200 events per year. Its traditional venues include the Tennessee Theatre, the Bijou Theatre, and the Civic Auditorium, though it also performs at a number of non-traditional venues.
The Knoxville Opera performs a season of opera every year, accompanied by a chorus. Knoxville was the location of Sergei Rachmaninoff's final concert in 1943, performed at Alumni Memorial Auditorium at the University of Tennessee.
Knoxville's underground music scene is rooted with the promotion by AC Entertainment founder Ashley Capps around 1979. AC Entertainment, a local entertainment group, sought to expand the city's scene. In the 1990s, noted alternative rock critic Ann Powers, author of ''Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America'', referred to the city as "Austin without the hype". Knoxville is also home to a vibrant punk rock scene, having emerged from venues in the Old City district, specifically the Mill & Mine and Pilot Light venues. Its underground music scene in punk and hardcore punk, hardcore grew as early as 1979. Such punk and hardcore bands included UXB, the STDs, and Koro. Spurred by Capps, Knoxville hosts the Big Ears Festival, Big Ears music festival since 2009. The festival, dubbed the "most ambitious avant-garde festival in America in more than a decade" in a 2014 ''Rolling Stone'' article, hosts musicians ranging from the aforementioned punk rock to chamber pop.[Weingarten, Christopher. "Big Ears 2014 Celebrates Steve Reich Via Punk, Drone, Jazz, Radiohead."](_blank)
Rolling Stone. March 31, 2014: C1
The city also hosts numerous art festivals, including the 17-day Dogwood Arts Festival (Knoxville), Dogwood Arts Festival in April, which features art shows, crafts fairs, food and live music. Also in April is the Rossini Festival, which celebrates opera and Italian culture. June's Kuumba (meaning creativity in Swahili language, Swahili) Festival commemorates the region's African American heritage and showcases visual arts, folk arts, dance, games, music, storytelling, theater, and food.
Appearances in popular culture
Knoxville has appeared in music, literature and television. Film director Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, and the city and East Tennessee are frequently mentioned in his films, such as in the 1994 film ''Pulp Fiction'', in which Bruce Willis' character (and the watch given to him by Christopher Walken's character) is from Knoxville.
A number of films and television programs were filmed in the city, such as the 1999 film ''October Sky'', the 2000 film ''Road Trip (film), Road Trip'' at the University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...
campus, ''Box of Moonlight'', starring John Turturro and Sam Rockwell, scenes from the 2004 film ''The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things'', ''Woman In Hiding'', a 1949 film noir starring actress Ida Lupino, and the 2017 film, ''The Last Movie Star'', which was one of the last films to star Burt Reynolds.
In literature, author Cormac McCarthy is from Knoxville, and several of his books feature the city, such as "Suttree", a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel. James Agee also lived in the city, and his 1957 posthumous autobiographical novel ''A Death in the Family'' provides a portrait of life in Knoxville, while also wrestling with the death of Agee's father in a car accident, and the impact this had on his family.
Mark Twain wrote about a gunfight in downtown Knoxville involving Joseph Mabry Jr., owner of the city's antebellum Mabry-Hazen House in ''Life on the Mississippi'' from 1883. Several other books take place in fictionalized versions of the city, such as the 1915 Anne W. Armstrong novel, ''The Seas of God'', and David Madden (novelist), David Madden's 1974 novel, ''Bijou'', is set in a fictional city known as "Cherokee", based on Knoxville.[The Mighty Metro Pulse Collection of Awesome Knoxville Lists]
, ''Metro Pulse'', June 23, 2010. Accessed at the Internet Archive, October 1, 2015.
The first part of James Herman Robinson's 1950 autobiography, ''The Road Without Turning'', takes place in Knoxville, and "The Man in the Overstuffed Chair", a 1985 short story by playwright Tennessee Williams, gives a brief description of the death of Williams' father, Cornelius, at a Knoxville hospital, and his subsequent burial at Old Gray Cemetery.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor, Peter Taylor's last novel in 1994, ''In the Tennessee Country'', refers to a "Knoxville cemetery" where the main character's grandfather (a fictitious politician) is buried. This may refer to Old Gray Cemetery, where Taylor's own grandfather, Governor Robert Love Taylor, was originally buried in 1912.
Swiss travel writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach visited Knoxville in the 1930s, and wrote an essay about the city, "Auf der Schattenseite von Knoxville", which was published in the December 1937 edition of the Swiss magazine, ''Basler Zeitung, National Zeitung''.
A number of songs and music compositions are about or feature Knoxville as well. "The Knoxville Girl", first recorded in 1924, is traditional Appalachian music, Appalachian ballad. Classical composer Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" from 1947 is a voice & orchestra piece based on 1938 short prose by James Agee. Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler recorded a song entitled "Daddy's Gone to Knoxville" on his 2002 solo album, ''The Ragpicker's Dream'', "The Ballad of Thunder Road" by Robert Mitchum references Knoxville's Bearden community, and other musicians such as Steve Earle, Ronnie Milsap, and Hank Williams, Jr. have mentioned the city in lyrics. Hank Williams, Hank Jr.'s father, spent his Death of Hank Williams, last day alive in Knoxville as well. Country singer Kenny Chesney is from Knoxville.
A number of early country music songs were recorded in Knoxville as the "St. James Sessions" in 1930, such as "Satan is Busy In Knoxville" by Leola Manning.
Events
The Knoxville Christmas in the City event runs for eight weeks of events at locations throughout the city including the Singing Christmas Tree and ice skating on the Holidays on Ice skating rink.
* Asian Festival
* Big Ears Festival
* Boo At The Zoo
* Boomsday (discontinued)
* Brewfest
* Concerts on the Square
* Dogwood Arts Festival (Knoxville), Dogwood Arts Festival
* Fantasy of Trees
* Festival on the Fourth
* First Friday ArtWalk
* Greek Fest
* HoLa Festival
* International Biscuit Festival
* Knox Food Fest
* Knoxville Hardcore Fest
* Knoxville Horror Film Festival
* Knoxville Marathon
* Knoxville Powerboat Classic
* Market Square Farmers' Market
* NSRA Street Rod Nationals South
* Pride Fest
* Rhythm & Blooms Festival
* Rossini Festival
* Tennessee Valley Fair
* Vestival
* Volapalooza
Sites of interest
* Beck Cultural Exchange Center
* Bijou Theatre (Knoxville), Bijou Theatre
* Bleak House (Knoxville, Tennessee), Bleak House
* William Blount Mansion
* Fountain City Art Center
* Candoro Marble Works
* James White Civic Coliseum, Civic Coliseum
* Fort Dickerson
* Haley Heritage Square
* Ijams Nature Center
* James White's Fort
* Knoxville Botanical Gardens and Arboretum
* Knoxville Convention Center
* Knoxville Greenways
* Knoxville Museum of Art
* Knoxville Police Museum
* Zoo Knoxville
* Mabry-Hazen House
* Marble Springs
* Market Square, Knoxville, Market Square
* Frank H. McClung Museum
* Museum of East Tennessee History
* National Register of Historic Places, Knox County, Tennessee
* Old City Knoxville, Old City
* Ramsey House
* Sunsphere
The Sunsphere located in World’s Fair Park in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, is a high hexagonal steel truss structure, topped with a gold-colored glass sphere that served as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair.
Design
Designed by the Knox ...
* Tennessee Amphitheater
The Tennessee Amphitheater, also known as the World's Fair Park Amphitheater, is an open-air amphitheater located in the 1982 World's Fair Park in Knoxville, Tennessee.
History
The Tennessee Amphitheater was built for 1982 World's Fair and was d ...
* Tennessee River Boat
* Tennessee Theatre
* Three Rivers Rambler Train Ride
* Volunteer Landing
* Women's Basketball Hall of Fame
The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame honors those who have contributed to the sport of women's basketball. The Hall of Fame opened in 1999 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. It is the only facility of its kind dedicated to all levels of women's ba ...
* 1982 World's Fair, World's Fair Park
* Knoxville's Urban Wilderness
Media
The ''Knoxville News Sentinel'' is the local daily newspaper in Knoxville, with a daily circulation of 97,844 and a Sunday circulation of 124,225, as of 2011. The city is home to several weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly publications.
As of 2011, the Knoxville designated market area, television market was the 61st-largest in the U.S. with 527,790 homes, according to Nielsen Market Research.[Norma Polovitz Nickerson and Jake Jorgenson]
Designated Market Areas: Using Zip Codes As a Marketing Tool
. University of Montana Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research, April 2011. Retrieved: January 26, 2012. The largest local television station is National Broadcasting Company, NBC affiliate WBIR-TV, with 28,305 viewing households, followed by American Broadcasting Company, ABC affiliate WATE-TV (23,559), Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS affiliate WVLT-TV (20,052), Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox affiliate WTNZ (10,319), and The CW Television Network, CW affiliate WBXX-TV (5,415). Other local stations include WKNX-TV (Ind.), WVLR (Christian Television Network, CTN) and WPXK-TV, WPXK (Ion Television, Ion). East Tennessee PBS operates Knoxville's Public Broadcasting Service station at WKOP 17.
Discovery, Inc. operates the former Scripps Networks Interactive cable television networks from Knoxville, including HGTV, Magnolia Network, Food Network and Cooking Channel. Jewelry Television, a home shopping channel, is also based in the city, and several companies that provide production services to the ex-SNI networks also maintain Knoxville operations.
According to Arbitron's 2011 Radio Market Rankings, Knoxville had the nation's 72nd largest radio market, with 684,700 households. In 2010, Country music station WIVK-FM, WIVK (107.7 FM) had the market's highest AQH share at 16.3, followed by adult contemporary station WJXB-FM, WJXB (97.5 FM) at 10.1, and news/talk station WCYQ (100.3 FM) at 8.3. Other stations include Rock music stations WIMZ-FM, WIMZ (103.5 FM) and WNFZ (94.3), Rhythmic Airplay Chart, Rhythmic Top 40 station WKHT (104.5 FM), contemporary hit radio, contemporary hit station WWST (102.1 FM), and National Public Radio station WUOT (91.9 FM). The University of Tennessee radio station operates under WUTK-FM, WUTK (90.3 FM).
Sports
The University of Tennessee, University of Tennessee's athletics programs, nicknamed the "Tennessee Volunteers, Volunteers", or "the Vols", are immensely popular in Knoxville and the surrounding region. Neyland Stadium
Neyland Stadium ( ), is a sports stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It serves primarily as the home of the Tennessee Volunteers football team, but is also used to host large conventions and has been a site for several National Foot ...
, where the Vols' football team plays, is one of the largest stadiums in the world, and Thompson–Boling Arena, home of the men's and women's basketball teams, is one of the nation's largest indoor basketball arenas. The telephone area code for Knox County and eight adjacent counties is 865 (VOL). Knoxville is also the home of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame
The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame honors those who have contributed to the sport of women's basketball. The Hall of Fame opened in 1999 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. It is the only facility of its kind dedicated to all levels of women's ba ...
, almost entirely thanks to the success of Pat Summitt and the Tennessee Lady Volunteers basketball, University of Tennessee women's basketball team.
Professional sports teams located in Knoxville include
* Knoxville Ice Bears (Southern Professional Hockey League)
* Tennessee Smokies
The Tennessee Smokies are a Minor League Baseball team based in Kodak, Tennessee, a suburb of Knoxville. The team, which plays in the Southern League, is the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. They play at Smokies Stadium, directly off ...
(Southern League (1964–2020), Southern League, Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs)
* One Knoxville SC (USL League One)
In 2019, the Knoxville Force a National Premier Soccer League and Lady Force, an NWPSL Soccer League in the Southeast Division were shuttered.
Government
Knoxville is governed by a mayor and nine-member City Council. It uses the strong-mayor form of the mayor-council government, mayor-council system. The council consists of six members from single-member districts and three members elected at-large for the entire city. The council chooses from among its members the vice mayor (currently Gwen McKenzie), the Beer Board chairperson (currently Andrew Roberto), and a representative to the Knoxville Transportation Authority (currently Amelia Parker). The City Council meets every other Tuesday at 7:00p.m. in the Main Assembly Room of the Knoxville City-County Building, City County Building.
The current mayor is Indya Kincannon, who was sworn in as the city's second female mayor on December 21, 2019, replacing the first female mayor of the city, Madeline Rogero, who was elected in 2011. Interim mayor Daniel Brown (politician), Daniel Brown, the first African American to hold the office, was appointed in January 2011 following the resignation of Bill Haslam, who was elected Governor of Tennessee. Other recent mayors include Haslam's predecessor, Victor Ashe
The name Victor or Viktor may refer to:
* Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname
Arts and entertainment
Film
* ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film
* ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...
(1987−2003), Kyle Testerman (1972−1975, 1984−1987), and Randy Tyree (1976−1983).
The Knoxville Fire Department (KFD) provides Class2 International Organization for Standardization, ISO service inside the city limits. The fire department operates 19 stations with 308 uniformed personnel. KFD provides firefighting, first responder EMS response, vehicle extrication and HazMat response within the city limits.
The Knoxville Police Department serves the citizens of Knoxville with 378 officers and a total of 530 employees.
911 ambulance service inside Knoxville is provided by AMR Ambulance under contract with Knox County.
Knoxville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court
The Tennessee Supreme Court is the ultimate judicial tribunal of the state of Tennessee. Roger A. Page is the Chief Justice.
Unlike other states, in which the state attorney general is directly elected or appointed by the governor or state leg ...
's courthouse for East Tennessee.
City Council
Knoxville is governed by a mayor and a nine-member City Council, six of which represent from single-member districts and three members are elected at-large. Council members are elected through a nonpartisan, district-wide primary in which top two vote-getters advance to a city-wide runoff election in November. Council members are elected to serve a four-year term that is eligible for reelection once.
List of mayors
Not to be confused with the Knox County, Tennessee#Government and politics, Mayor of Knox County
Education
Knoxville is home to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, main campus of the University of Tennessee (UTK), which has operated in the city since the 1790s. As of 2011, UTK had an enrollment of over 27,000 and endowments of over $300million.[East Tennessee Colleges and Universities]
, Knoxville Book of Lists (''Knoxville News Sentinel''), 2012. Retrieved: January 15, 2012. The school employs over 1,300 instructional faculty, and offers more than 300 degree programs.
Pellissippi State Community College is a two-year school governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents that offers college transfer, transfer programs, two-year degrees, and certificate programs. Its main campus is located off Pellissippi Parkway in western Knox County. As of 2011, the school had a system-wide enrollment of over 11,000 students,
Johnson University (formerly Johnson Bible College) is a Bible college affiliated with the Christian churches and churches of Christ. As of 2012, the school had an enrollment of 845. Johnson traditionally specializes in training preachers and ministers, but also offers degrees in counseling, teaching, music, and nonprofit management.
South College (formerly Knoxville Business College) is a for-profit school located in West Knoxville that offers undergraduate and graduate programs in business, health care, criminal justice, and legal fields. The school had an enrollment of 717 as of 2010.
Knoxville College was a historically black college that began operating in Knoxville in the 1870s. The school offered a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Studies and an Associate of Arts degree. Knoxville College had an enrollment of about 100 students as of 2010 and closed permanently in 2015.
Institutions with satellite campus, branch campuses in Knoxville include Carson-Newman University, King University, Lincoln Memorial University (namely, the Duncan School of Law), National College of Business & Technology, Roane State Community College, Strayer University, Tennessee Wesleyan University, and Tusculum College. Virginia College offers career programs in Knoxville. Huntington University of Health Sciences, which offers distance education, distance courses in nutrition and health, has its offices in Knoxville.
Primary and secondary education
Public schools in Knoxville are part of the Knox County Schools system, which oversees 89 schools (50 elementary, 14 middle, 14 high, and 11 adult centers) serving over 56,000 students. This system includes five magnet schools and a STEM fields, STEM academy. Knox County high schools had a graduation rate of 86.6%, as of 2011. The average classroom ratio is 14 students per teacher.
Knox County is home to over 50 private and parochial schools, the largest of which include the Christian Academy of Knoxville, the Webb School of Knoxville, Knoxville Catholic High School, Grace Christian Academy, Cedar Springs Weekday School, and Sacred Heart Cathedral School.
Libraries
The Knox County Public Library system consists of the Lawson McGhee Library, located downtown, and 17 branch libraries, overseeing a collection of over 1.3million volumes.
Infrastructure
Health
Knox County's hospital system contains over 2,600 licensed beds in seven general use hospitals and one children's hospital. The city's largest hospital as of 2011 was the University of Tennessee Medical Center, which had 581 beds, followed by Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center (541), Parkwest Medical Center (462), and Physicians Regional (370). The city's largest ambulatory surgery center was the Parkwest Surgery Center, which employed 58 physicians and 35 nurses, followed by the Fort Sanders West Outpatient Surgery Center and the St. Mary's Ambulatory Surgery Center South.
2021 County Health Rankings places Knox county at 13th out the 95 counties. Life expectancy was 76.3 years. Health behaviors noted: 19% smokers vs state average of 21%, 29% of the population is obese vs 33% for the state, excessive drinking is 19% vs 17%, drug overdoses 52 per 100,000 with the state at 28 overdoses per 100,000.
In the 2010s, Knoxville's air quality continued to greatly improve over that of past decades according to the American Lung Association's State of the Air 2017.
Utilities
The Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) provides electricity, water, and wastewater management to Knoxville residents and businesses. KUB's service area covers 688 square miles and includes over 5,200 miles of power lines providing electricity to over 196,000 customers.[KUB—Electricity]
, KUB website. Retrieved: January 24, 2012. The average electric bill was just over $96 per month.[Knoxville-Area Utilities]
, Knoxville Book of Lists (''Knoxville News Sentinel''), 2012. Retrieved: January 24, 2012. KUB purchases its electricity from 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 Carolin ...
.
Transportation
Highways
The two principal interstate highways serving Knoxville are Interstate 40 in Tennessee, Interstate 40, which connects the city to Asheville, North Carolina, Asheville (directly) and Bristol, Tennessee, Bristol (via Interstate 81 in Tennessee, I-81) to the east and Nashville to the west, and Interstate 75, which connects the city to Chattanooga to the south and Lexington, Kentucky, Lexington to the north. The two interstates merge about west of Downtown Knoxville near Dixie Lee Junction, Tennessee, Dixie Lee Junction and diverge as they approach the Downtown area, with I-40 continuing on through the Downtown area and I-75 turning north. Interstate 640 provides a bypass (road), bypass for I-40 travelers, and Interstate 275 provides a faster connection to I-75 for Downtown travelers headed north. A spur route of I-40, Pellissippi Parkway, Interstate 140 (Pellissippi Parkway), connects West Knoxville with McGhee Tyson Airport and Maryville.
Prior to its reconstruction for the 1982 World's Fair tourism traffic, the interchange of I-75 (now I-275) and I-40 was known as "Malfunction Junction", because its consistent state of traffic jammed throughout daily.
Knoxville's busiest road is a stretch of U.S. Route 129 in Tennessee, U.S. Route 129 known as Alcoa Highway, which connects the Downtown area with McGhee Tyson Airport and Maryville. A merged stretch of U.S. Route 70 in Tennessee, US-70 and U.S. Route 11 in Tennessee, US-11 enters the city from the east along Magnolia Avenue, winds its way through the Downtown area, crosses the U.T. campus along Cumberland Avenue ("The Strip"), and proceeds through West Knoxville along Kingston Pike. US-11 splits into U.S. Route 11E, US-11E and U.S. Route 11W, 11W in Downtown, with the former connecting Knoxville to Jefferson City, Tennessee, Jefferson City and Morristown, Tennessee, Morristown, and the latter with Rutledge and Bean Station. U.S. Route 441 in Tennessee, US-441, which connects Knoxville to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, passes along Broadway in North Knoxville, Henley Street in the Downtown area, and Chapman Highway in South Knoxville. U.S. Route 25W (Tennessee), US-25W, which enters from the east concurrent with US-70, connects Knoxville with Clinton.[
]
Tennessee State Route 158, State Route 158 (SR 158) loops around the Downtown area from Kingston Pike just west of UT's campus, southward and eastward along Neyland Drive and the riverfront, and northward along the James White Parkway before terminating at I-40. Tennessee State Route 62, SR 62 (Western Avenue, Oak Ridge Highway), connects Downtown Knoxville with Oak Ridge to the west. Tennessee State Route 168, SR 168, known as Governor John Sevier Highway, runs along the eastern and southern periphery of the city. Tennessee State Route 162, SR 162 (Pellissippi Parkway) connects West Knoxville with Oak Ridge. Tennessee State Route 331, SR 331 (Tazewell Pike) connects the Fountain City, Tennessee, Fountain City area to rural northeast Knox County. Tennessee State Route 332, SR 332 (Northshore Drive) connects West Knoxville and Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
. Tennessee State Route 33, SR 33 (Maryville Pike, Maynardville Pike) traverses much of South Knoxville southward, and connects to the suburbs of Halls Crossroads and Maynardville northward.[
Four vehicle bridges connect Downtown Knoxville with South Knoxville, namely the South Knoxville Bridge (James White Parkway), the Gay Street Bridge (Gay Street (Knoxville), Gay Street), the Henley Street Bridge, or Henley Bridge (Henley Street), and the J. E. "Buck" Karnes Bridge (Alcoa Highway). Two railroad bridges, located between the Henley Street Bridge and Buck Karnes Bridge, serve the CSX and Northfolk Southern railroads. Smaller bridges radiating out from the downtown area include the Western Avenue Viaduct and Clinch Avenue Viaduct, the Robert Booker Bridge (Summit Hill Drive), the Hill Avenue Viaduct, and the Gay Street Viaduct.][
]
Mass transit
Public transportation is provided by Knoxville Area Transit , Knoxville Area Transit (KAT), which operates over 80 buses, tourist trolley, road trolleys, and paratransit vehicles, and transports more than 3.6million passengers per year. Regular routes connect the Downtown area, U.T., and most residential areas with major shopping centers throughout the city. KAT operates using city, state, and federal funds, and passenger fares, and is managed by Veolia Transport.
Airports
Knoxville and the surrounding area is served by McGhee Tyson Airport (IATA:TYS), a airport equipped with twin runways. The airport is located south of Knoxville in Alcoa, but is owned by the non-profit Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority (MKAA). McGhee Tyson offers eight major airlines serving 19 non-stop destinations, and averages 120 arrivals and departures per day. The airport includes the Air Cargo Complex, which serves FedEx, UPS, and Airborne Express. The McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, located adjacent to the civilian airport, is home to the Tennessee National Guard's 134th Air Refueling Wing.
The MKAA also owns the Knoxville Downtown Island Airport, Downtown Island Airport, a general aviation facility located on Dickinson's Island in southeast Knoxville. This airport is equipped with a runway, and averages about 225 operations per day. Over 100 aircraft, mostly single-engine planes, are based at the airport.
Railroads
Rail freight in Knoxville is handled by two Class I railroads, CSX Transportation, CSX and Norfolk Southern, and one shortline railroad, shortline, the Knoxville and Holston River Railroad. Railroads account for about 12% of the Knoxville area's outbound freight and 16% of the area's inbound freight.[Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization]
2005–2030 Knoxville Regional Long Range Transportation Plan Update
, 2007, pp. 51-53. Retrieved: December 31, 2011. The city has two major rail terminals: the Burkhart Enterprises terminal at the Forks of the River Industrial Park just east of the city, and the TransFlo facility adjacent to the U.T. campus. Knoxville's two old passenger stations, the Southern Terminal, Knoxville, Tennessee, Southern Terminal and the L&N Station (Knoxville), L&N Station, now serve non-railroad functions.
Norfolk Southern, which controls about of tracks in the Knoxville area, averages 35 freight trains through the city per day, and operates a major classification yard, the John Sevier Yard, just east of the city. The company uses a small rail yard near the I-40/I-275 interchange in Downtown Knoxville for a staging area. The Norfolk Southern system includes spur lines to the coal fields around Middlesboro, Kentucky, and the ALCOA plants in Blount County.
CSX controls about of tracks in the Knoxville area, much of which is located along an important north–south line between Cincinnati and Louisville to the north and Chattanooga and Atlanta to the south. Minor switching operations for CSX occur at the TransFlo facility near the U.T. campus. The CSX system includes spur lines to TVA's Bull Run Fossil Plant and the 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 an ...
in Anderson County, and the ALCOA plants in Blount County.
The Knoxville and Holston River Railroad (KXHR) is a subsidiary of Gulf and Ohio Railways, a shortline holding company headquartered at the James Park House in Downtown Knoxville. The KXHR operates a line between the Burkhart terminal at Forks of the River and the Coster Yard in North Knoxville, where the freight is transferred to CSX and Norfolk Southern lines or transloading, transloaded onto trucks. The KXHR also manages the Knoxville Locomotive Works at the Coster Yard, and operates the ''Three Rivers Rambler'', a tourist train that runs along the riverfront.
Historic passenger service
Until the mid-20th century three railroads and their stations operated regular trains, serving points north, east, south and west: the Louisville and Nashville Railroad's L&N Station (Knoxville), L&N Station (last train operating there, 1968), the Smoky Mountain Railroad's station and the Southern Railway (US), Southern Railway's Southern Terminal, Knoxville, Tennessee, Southern Terminal (last train operating there, 1970).
River transport
Knoxville is an international port connected via navigable channels to the nation's inland waterways and the Gulf of Mexico. The city's waterfront lies just under 700 river miles from the Mississippi River (via the Tennessee River, Tennessee and Ohio River, Ohio rivers), and just under 900 river miles from Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf of Mexico (via the Tennessee River and Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway). TVA maintains a minimum channel on the entirety of the Tennessee River. The minimum size of locks on Tennessee River and Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway dams is by .Tennessee-Tombigbee Water—Tenn-Tom Quickfacts
. Retrieved: January 1, 2012.
Most commercial shipping on the Tennessee River is provided by barges, which deliver on average half a million tons of cargo to Knoxville per year, mostly asphalt, road salt, and steel and coke (fuel), coke.[Rebecca Ferrar,]
Rollin' On the River
", Knoxville ''News Sentinel'', August 22, 2004. Retrieved: January 1, 2012. Burkhart Enterprises operates the city's most active public barge terminal at its Forks of the River facility, handling approximately 350,000 tons of barge cargo per year. Knoxville Barge and Chattanooga-based Serodino, Inc., provide barge shipping services to and from the city.
Recreational craft that frequent the river include small johnboats, fishing boats and yachts. Boat slips and a marina are located at Volunteer Landing in the Downtown area. The VOL Navy, a flotilla of several dozen boats, swarms the river during weeks when the U.T. football team plays at Neyland Stadium. Cruise lines operating in the city include the ''Volunteer Princess'', a luxury yacht, and the ''Star of Knoxville'', a paddle steamer, paddlewheel riverboat.
Sister cities
Knoxville has seven sister cities as designated by Sister Cities International:
* Yesan, Republic of Korea
* Chełm, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland
* Chengdu, Sichuan, People's Republic of China
* Kaohsiung, Republic of China
* Larissa, Greece
* Muroran, Hokkaido, Japan
* Neuquen, Argentina
See also
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Knox County, Tennessee
* List of people from Knoxville, Tennessee
Notes
References
Further reading
* Barber, John W., and Howe, Henry. ''All the Western States and Territories...'' (Cincinnati, Ohio: Howe's Subscription Book Concern, 1867). pp.631–632.
* Carey, Ruth. "Change Comes to Knoxville", in ''These Are Our Voices: The Story of Oak Ridge 1942–1970'', edited by James Overholt, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1987.
* Deaderick, Lucile, ed. ''Heart of the Valley—A History of Knoxville, Tennessee'' Knoxville: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976.
* Jennifer Long; "Government Job Creation Programs-Lessons from the 1930s and 1940s" ''Journal of Economic Issues'' . Volume: 33. Issue: 4. 1999. pp 903+, a case study of Knoxville.
* Isenhour, Judith Clayton. ''Knoxville, A Pictorial History.'' (Donning Company, 1978, 1980).
*
* McDonald, Michael, and Bruce Wheeler. ''Knoxville, Tennessee: Continuity and Change in an Appalachian City'' University of Tennessee Press, 1983. the standard academic history
* McKenzie, Robert Tracy. ''Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town in the American Civil War'' (2009) on Knoxvill
excerpt and text search
* ''The Future of Knoxville's Past: Historic and Architectural Resources in Knoxville, Tennessee.'' (Knoxville Historic Zoning Commission, October 2006).
* Rothrock, Mary U., editor. ''The French Broad-Holston Country: A History of Knox County, Tennessee.'' (Knox County Historical Committee; East Tennessee Historical Society, 1946).
* Temple, Oliver P. ''East Tennessee and the Civil War'' (1899) 588p
online edition
* Wheeler, Bruce. "Knoxville, Tennessee: A Mountain City in the New South" (University of Tennessee Press, 2005).
External links
Official website
Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corporation
*
City charter
Convention and Visitors Bureau
{{Authority control
Knoxville, Tennessee,
Cities in Tennessee
County seats in Tennessee
Former state capitals in the United States, Tennessee
Cities in Knoxville metropolitan area
East Tennessee
History of voting rights in the United States
Populated places established in 1786
Cities in Knox County, Tennessee
State of Franklin
Tennessee populated places on the Tennessee River
Tennessee populated places on the French Broad River
Populated places on the Underground Railroad
1791 establishments in the Southwest Territory