East Tennessee

• 1. Introduction

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  East Tennessee harbored one of the most closely guarded secrets of the 20th century. In 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building an entire city inside its forested mountain ridges. That city, Oak Ridge, hosted the world's first successful uranium enrichment operations. The enriched uranium became the material for atomic bombs dropped on Imperial Japan at the end of World War II.

  Yet long before Oak Ridge, this mountain landscape had been shaping American history for centuries. The region spans 33 counties and covers the eastern third of Tennessee, defined by state law as one of its three Grand Divisions. What made this remote corner of Appalachia the site of such pivotal moments? Why did most of its people refuse to follow their state into the Confederacy? And how did a recording session in Bristol in 1927 help launch a genre of music heard around the world?

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• 2. The Mountains and Rivers

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  The Tennessee River forms at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers in Knoxville. It flows southwestward to Chattanooga, tracing a path through East Tennessee's three major geological divisions. On the east lies the Blue Ridge Mountains, bordering North Carolina. In the center runs the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, and to the west sits the Cumberland Plateau.

  The Blue Ridge section averages 5,000 feet above sea level, the highest elevations in the state. Kuwohi, in the Great Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, reaches 6,643 feet, the state's highest point. At the opposite end of the scale, East Tennessee's lowest point sits at roughly 600 feet. That is where the Tennessee River crosses into Alabama in Marion County.

  The Ridge-and-Valley division is the region's largest, most populous, and lowest-lying section. Elongated ridges alternate with broad river valleys, running roughly northeast-to-southwest. Notable rivers draining through this terrain include the Clinch, Nolichucky, Watauga, Hiwassee, and Ocoee. The major cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga both sit within this central valley corridor.

  To the west, the Cumberland Plateau rises nearly 1,000 feet above the Appalachian Valley. It stretches from the Kentucky border southward to the Georgia and Alabama borders, with an average elevation of 2,000 feet. Flat-topped tablelands are cut through by waterfalls and steep gorges. The Tennessee Divide runs along the western part of the plateau, separating the watersheds of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.

  The Appalachian Trail enters Tennessee through the Great Smoky Mountains. It roughly follows the border with North Carolina before shifting entirely into the state near Roan Mountain.

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• 3. Long Before Tennessee

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  Native Americans were living in East Tennessee as early as 7,500 B.C., as excavations at the Icehouse Bottom site near Vonore revealed. Much of what archaeologists know about the region's prehistoric inhabitants came from surveys conducted before Tennessee Valley Authority reservoirs flooded the land. Federal law required those investigations as a condition of the construction.

  Significant Woodland period sites, spanning 1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D., include Rose Island near Vonore and Moccasin Bend near Chattanooga. During the Mississippian period, roughly 1000-1600 A.D., indigenous people built complex agrarian societies at places such as Toqua and Hiwassee Island. A minor chiefdom known as Chiaha had formed in the French Broad Valley. Spanish expeditions led by Hernando de Soto, Tristan de Luna, and Juan Pardo all visited these communities during the 16th century. Pardo, traveling through the region in 1566-1567, recorded the name Tanasqui from a local Native village. That name eventually evolved into Tennessee.

  By the early 18th century, diseases introduced by those Spanish expeditions had likely wiped out most of the region's indigenous inhabitants. The Cherokee began migrating from what is now Virginia into this landscape in the latter 17th century. They established towns in the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee valleys. Traders from the coastal colonies had to cross the mountains to reach these settlements, which became known as the Overhill towns.

  The first recorded permanent European settler in what is now Tennessee was William Bean. An associate of Daniel Boone, he built a residence along the Watauga River in present-day Johnson City in 1769. James Robertson and migrants from North Carolina soon formed the Watauga Settlement at Sycamore Shoals, in what is now Elizabethton. The land was leased from the Cherokees. In 1772, those settlers established the Watauga Association, the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. Nearly 20% of the settlers were Scotch-Irish, with most of the rest being of English descent.

  In 1775, a Cherokee faction led by Dragging Canoe split from the tribal leadership over the continuous ceding of Cherokee lands to European settlers. That faction, known as the Chickamauga, concentrated around what is now Chattanooga. Dragging Canoe's cousin Nancy Ward warned the settlers of an imminent attack, saving many lives. In 1780, the region's Overmountain settlers supplied 240 militiamen to a frontier force led by John Sevier. That force defeated British loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

  Quakers who had migrated from Pennsylvania in the 1790s formed the Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1814. The society was one of the nation's earliest organized abolitionist movements. In 1820, Elihu Embree established The Emancipator in Jonesborough, the nation's first exclusively abolitionist newspaper.

  The Cherokee removal came in 1838 and 1839. U.S. troops forcibly relocated nearly 17,000 Cherokees and about 2,000 Black people the Cherokees enslaved. They were moved from their homes in southeastern Tennessee to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. An estimated 4,000 died along the route. The operation was orchestrated from Fort Cass in Charleston, built on the site of the former Indian agency. In the Cherokee language, the event is called Nunna daul Isunyi, meaning the Trail Where We Cried.

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• 4. The Union in Rebel Country

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  In June 1861, nearly 70% of East Tennesseans voted against their state's ordinance of secession. That outcome stood in sharp contrast to the rest of Tennessee, where the ordinance succeeded statewide. Part of the explanation was economic. In 1860, enslaved people composed about 9% of East Tennessee's population, compared to 25% statewide. The mountain terrain discouraged large-scale plantation agriculture. Fewer East Tennesseans had a direct financial stake in the system the Confederacy was formed to defend. Many in the region also harbored deep suspicion of the aristocratic planter class that controlled the Southern Democratic Party.

  The Unionist East Tennessee Convention met in Greeneville in June 1861, formalizing the region's opposition. Delegates drafted a petition demanding that East Tennessee be allowed to form a separate state aligned with the Union. The Tennessee General Assembly rejected the petition, and Confederate troops occupied the region. That fall, Unionist guerrillas burned bridges and attacked Confederate sympathizers throughout the mountains. Confederate authorities responded by declaring martial law in parts of the region.

  Senator Andrew Johnson and Congressman Horace Maynard refused to resign when Tennessee seceded, retaining their seats despite representing a Confederate state. Both pressed President Abraham Lincoln to send troops into East Tennessee, and Lincoln made the region's liberation a top priority. Knoxville Whig editor William "Parson" Brownlow had been one of slavery's most outspoken defenders. Yet he attacked secessionism with equal fervor. Brownlow toured Northern states to rally support for the Unionist cause. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson as military governor of Tennessee.

  Union forces of the Army of the Cumberland fled to Chattanooga after defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Confederate troops under Braxton Bragg attempted to starve them into surrender. Reinforcements arrived under Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Hooker, and George Henry Thomas. On the 24th of November 1863, Hooker's forces defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Lookout Mountain. The following day, Grant and Thomas drove the Confederates from the city at the Battle of Missionary Ridge. These two victories, known as the Chattanooga campaign, gave Sherman the base from which he launched the Atlanta campaign in the spring of 1864.

  Confederate General James Longstreet launched his own campaign a few days later, targeting Knoxville. The attempt ended on the 29th of November 1863 when Union General Ambrose Burnside's forces repelled the assault at the Battle of Fort Sanders. Despite all its Unionist sentiment, East Tennessee was the last part of Tennessee to fall under Union control.

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• 5. Federal Power in the Mountains

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  Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. The agency's goals were flood control, cheap electricity, and a navigable waterway connecting Knoxville and Chattanooga to the nation's inland waterways. Starting with Norris Dam that same year, the TVA built ten hydroelectric dams in East Tennessee over the following two decades. Five more were built just across the state line in North Carolina and Georgia.

  TVA's hydroelectric projects in East Tennessee required the removal of 125,000 Tennessee Valley residents through eminent domain. Families who refused to sell were often compelled by court orders and lawsuits. Some dam projects inundated historic Native American sites and towns dating to the American Revolution. On occasion, land acquired through eminent domain was not flooded as expected, and TVA sold it to private developers. Tellico Village in Loudon County was built on such land.

  Tennessee Electric Power Company fought TVA in court through the 1930s. The company was represented by attorney Wendell Willkie and its president Jo Conn Guild. That legal battle was eventually dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and TVA absorbed TEPCO's assets.

  Tennessee Eastman built the Holston Ordnance Works in Kingsport, manufacturing an explosive called Composition B. The Department of Defense erected the Volunteer Ordnance Works in Chattanooga to produce TNT. Two uranium enrichment facilities, K-25 and Y-12, operated within what became Oak Ridge. ALCOA completed its North Plant to meet wartime demand for aluminum for aircraft construction. At the time of its completion, it was the world's largest plant under a single roof.

  Cherokee and Douglas dams were completed in record time to meet the region's surging demand for electricity. The massive Fontana Dam was built just across the state line in North Carolina to help supply the wartime operations.

  In the 1970s, the planned Tellico Dam in Loudon County was found to threaten the snail darter, an endangered fish. Environmental lawsuits led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill in 1978, which prompted amendments to the Endangered Species Act. Tellico Dam was completed in 1979, after a five-year legal battle.

  The town of Erwin in Unicoi County is home to Nuclear Fuel Services. Since 1960, the facility has been the largest supplier of uranium fuel for the United States Navy. It converts Cold War-era weapons uranium into commercially usable reactor fuel for power plants across the country.

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• 6. Sound of the Mountains

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  In 1927, the Victor Talking Machine Company conducted a series of recording sessions in Bristol. Those sessions produced the first recordings of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, two acts that would shape country music for generations. East Tennessee is often considered the birthplace of the genre, and Bristol is at the center of that claim.

  In 1916 and 1917, British folklorist Cecil Sharp visited rural communities in the region, including Flag Pond, Sevierville, and Harrogate. He transcribed dozens of English ballads that had been passed down through generations from the region's earliest settlers. Among the most successful early East Tennessee musicians were Uncle Am Stuart, Charlie Bowman, Clarence Ashley, G. B. Grayson, and Theron Hale.

  The Johnson City sessions of 1928 and the Knoxville St. James Sessions of 1930 proved commercially successful. By the late 1930s, the success of the Grand Ole Opry had lured much of the region's talent to Nashville. In the 1940s, the Opry and its associated labels abandoned the term hillbilly in favor of country, hoping to attract a wider audience.

  Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, and Carl Smith were all born in Union County. Their work helped drive both the Nashville sound and the development of rockabilly, carrying the genre to an international audience.

  Dolly Parton grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee. Her 1971 song Coat of Many Colors was later adapted into a television film broadcast on NBC in 2015. The film received the Tex Ritter Award from the Academy of Country Music.

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• 7. Against the Grain

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  The 1st Congressional District of East Tennessee has been held by Republicans or their predecessors without interruption since 1881. For all but four years since 1859, it has leaned the same way. The 2nd District has been in Republican hands since 1855. These facts place East Tennessee among the oldest continuously Republican regions in the United States. That is a striking position for a corner of the American South.

  Historian O.P. Temple traces this political identity not to the Civil War but to the anti-aristocratic Covenanters of Scotland. Their descendants were among the Scotch-Irish settlers who helped populate the region from the late 18th century onward. East Tennessee's yeoman farmers clashed for generations with the large-scale planters and business interests that controlled the Southern Democratic Party. East Tennesseans revered figures like John Sevier and Davy Crockett. They were drawn to the political philosophies of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. When the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, East Tennesseans shifted to the Opposition Party and then the Constitutional Union Party. That party carried Tennessee's electoral votes in 1860.

  The congressmen from the 1st and 2nd Districts were the only members of Congress who did not resign when Tennessee seceded in 1861. After hostilities ended, residents of those districts identified immediately with the Republicans. The region stands as one of the few in the entire South to have voted consistently Republican since the Civil War.

  Johnson and Unicoi counties are among the few in the entire country that have never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election. The Chattanooga-based 3rd District was historically more competitive, though recent decades have pulled it sharply toward the Republican column as well.

  In 1888, Pennsylvania-born Henry Clay Evans won the congressional seat for the 3rd District. He rejected the customary sharing of presidential patronage with state Democrats. The legislature responded by gerrymandering his district, and he lost the seat in 1890. After 1901, more than half a century passed without the legislature redrawing its districts, despite significant population shifts. Memphis resident Charles Baker sued the legislature in 1959, hoping to force a redrawing. The resulting U.S. Supreme Court case, Baker v. Carr, became a landmark ruling in American electoral law.

  In the 2024 presidential election, East Tennessee's counties gave the Republican candidate 71.36% of their votes.

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