West Knoxville is a section of
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, 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 Di ...
, US. It west of the city's
downtown area. It stretches from
Sequoyah Hills on the east to the city's border with
Farragut on the west. West Knoxville is concentrated around
Kingston Pike
Kingston Pike is a highway in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, that connects Downtown Knoxville with West Knoxville, Farragut, and other communities in the western part of the county. The road follows a merged stretch of U.S. Route 11 ...
(
US-70
U.S. Route 70 or U.S. Highway 70 (US 70) is an east–west United States highway that runs for from eastern North Carolina to east-central Arizona. It is a major east–west highway of the Southeastern, Southern and Southwestern United States. E ...
/
US-11
{{Infobox road
, country=USA
, type=US
, route=11
, map={{maplink, frame=yes, plain=yes, frame-align=center, frame-width=290, frame-height=330, type=line, from=U.S. Route 11.map
, map_custom=yes
, map_notes=US 11 in red, US 11E in blue, US 11W in ...
), and along with Sequoyah Hills includes the neighborhoods of Lyons View, Forest Hills,
Bearden,
West Hills, Westmoreland Heights, Cedar Bluff, and Ebenezer.
[History of Kingston Pike/Sequoyah Hills]
2008. Retrieved: 29 June 2011.
"West Knoxville" originally referred to the area immediately west of Second Creek, i.e., what is now
Fort Sanders and 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, ...
(UT) campus, which were incorporated as the City of West Knoxville in 1888.
[John Wooldridge, George Mellen, William Rule (ed.), ''Standard History of Knoxville, Tennessee'' (General Books, 2009), pp. 92-94, 171-173.] This city was annexed by Knoxville in 1897, and Fort Sanders and UT are now part of downtown Knoxville. Continued improvements along Kingston Pike, namely the paving of the road to the county line in 1892
and the laying of trolley tracks to Lyon's View Pike in 1913, encouraged westward expansion. Sequoyah Hills and Lyon's View Pike were annexed in 1917, and Bearden and West Hills were annexed in 1962.
West Knoxville's first economic boom came in the 1920s and 1930s, when Kingston Pike was part of a merged section of two popular cross-country tourist routes, the
Dixie Highway
Dixie Highway was a United States auto trail first planned in 1914 to connect the Midwest with the South. It was part of a system and was expanded from an earlier Miami to Montreal highway. The final system is better understood as a network of ...
and the
Lee Highway
The Lee Highway was a national auto trail in the United States, connecting New York City and San Francisco, California, via the South and Southwest. After receiving a letter on January 15, 1919, from Dr. Samuel Myrtle Johnson of Roswell, New Mex ...
. In recent decades, the construction of dozens of shopping plazas in West Knoxville, beginning with Western Plaza in 1957, and the completion of
West Town Mall
West Town Mall is a shopping mall located in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Opened in August 1972, this one-level mall is located in the western portion of Knoxville in the West Hills community. West Town Mall is located along Interstates 40/ ...
in 1972, caused Knoxville's primary retail corridor to shift from downtown Knoxville to Kingston Pike, where it remains.
[Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission]
West City Sector Plan - Land Use and Development
9 August 2007. Retrieved: 1 December 2010. West Knoxville's most recent major shopping complex, the
Turkey Creek, opened in 2002.
[Bruce Wheeler, ''Knoxville, Tennessee: A Mountain City in the New South'' (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), pp. 135, 139, 142, 153, 201.]
Throughout the 20th century, West Knoxville was settled by affluent Knoxvillians and newcomers to the Knoxville area, many of whom held more liberal political views than residents in other parts of the city.
The annexation of large parts of West Knoxville in 1962 brought into the city large numbers of voters who helped elect one of Knoxville's most progressive city councils in decades in 1964.
West Knoxville is also known for aggressive neighborhood advocacy groups, such as the Kingston Pike Sequoyah Hills Association and the West Hills Community Association.
See also
*
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 ...
*
Dixie Lee Junction
*
Solway
References
External links
West City Sector Plan— Metropolitan Planning Commission site
{{Knoxville neighborhoods
Neighborhoods in Knoxville, Tennessee