Dixie Lee Junction is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Loudon County,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, situated at the intersection of

U.S. Route 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 ...

(US 70) and

U.S. Route 11 U.S. Route 11 or U.S. Highway 11 (US 11) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway extending across the eastern U.S. The southern terminus of the route is at US 90 in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refu ...

(US 11). The community is named for its historical location at the junction of the eastern leg of 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 o ...

(which followed US 70 through the region) and the

Lee Highway The Lee Highway was a United States auto trail initially connecting from an eastern zero mile marker on the Ellipse in Washington DC to a western zero marker, the Pacific Milestone, in the center of San Diego, California — via the Ame ...

(which followed US 11).Jack Neely, "Down the Dixie Lee Highway." ''From the Shadow Side: And Other Stories of Knoxville, Tennessee'' (Tellico Books, 2003), pp. 125-139. From the advent of automobile travel in the late 1920s until the construction of the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, or the Eisenhower Interstate System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Hi ...

in the late 1950s and 1960s, these two highways were major cross-country routes, and Dixie Lee Junction developed as a "last chance" stopover for tourists traveling southward from

Knoxville Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located on the Tennessee River and had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 United States census. It is the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division ...

. While the completion of the interstates drew away most of the cross-country traffic, the US 70/US 11 intersection still serves a strategic role as the western end of the four-lane

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&nb ...

, a major commercial thoroughfare in western Knox County. The Dixie Lee Junction community lies adjacent to the town of Farragut, with the Knox-Loudon county line (which runs

perpendicular In geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at right angles, i.e. at an angle of 90 degrees or π/2 radians. The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the '' perpendicular symbol'', � ...

to Kingston Pike) being the technical boundary between the two communities. US 70 approaches Dixie Lee Junction from

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

to the west, and US 11 approaches from Lenoir City to the southwest. The merged highways then continue eastward for through Farragut and Knoxville. Two major interstate highways,

Interstate 40 Interstate 40 (I-40) is a major east–west transcontinental Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway in the Southeastern United States, southeastern and Southwestern United States, southwestern portions of the United States. At a leng ...

(I-40) and

I-75 Interstate 75 (I-75) is a major north–south Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes and Southeastern United States, Southeastern regions of the United States. As with most Interstates that end ...

, merge just northwest of Dixie Lee Junction. The Dixie Highway was conceived in 1914 to provide a convenient route from the

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It ...

to Florida. Its eastern section entered downtown Knoxville via Broadway before veering westward along Cumberland Avenue and out into West Knoxville along Kingston Pike. The Lee Highway, which connected New York and San Francisco, entered Knoxville from Bean Station to the northeast, and merged with the Dixie Highway in downtown Knoxville. Knoxville lay along the Dixie Highway roughly halfway between the Midwestern states and Florida, and thus made a convenient place for Florida-bound tourists to stop for the night. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Kingston Pike was lined with motor courts and motels, and restaurants with oddly-shaped buildings and flashy signs designed to catch the attention of passers-by. Businesses in Dixie Lee Junction during this period consisted of "last-chance" ventures that provided food, fuel, and other supplies before south-bound drivers entered a predominantly-rural stretch of the highway en route to

Chattanooga Chattanooga ( ) is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located along the Tennessee River and borders Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee ...

Arts and culture

Ronnie James Dio Ronald James Padavona (July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010), known professionally as Ronnie James Dio, was an American heavy metal singer. He fronted numerous bands throughout his career, including Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio and Heaven & Hel ...

's band

Elf An elf (: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic peoples, Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in Norse mythology, North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda'' ...

released a song "Dixie Lee Junction" about the community on their 1972 album

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Loudon County, Tennessee Unincorporated communities in Tennessee Dixie Highway