East Tennessee

• 1. Geographic Foundations And Boundaries

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  East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. It comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee and consists of 33 counties. Thirty of these counties lie within the Eastern Time Zone, while Bledsoe, Cumberland, and Marion counties fall into the Central Time Zone. The region sits entirely within the Appalachian Mountains, featuring landforms that range from densely forested mountains to broad river valleys.

  The Blue Ridge Mountains form the border with North Carolina on the east side. This section contains the highest elevations in the state, including Kuwohi at an average elevation above sea level. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park protects much of this heavily forested area. The Ridge-and-Valley division makes up East Tennessee's largest, lowest lying, and most populous section. It features alternating elongate ridges with broad river valleys oriented northeast-to-southwest.

  The Tennessee River forms at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers in Knoxville. It flows southwestward to Chattanooga, marking the lowest point in East Tennessee where it enters Alabama in Marion County. The Cumberland Plateau rises nearly 1,000 feet above the Appalachian Valley, stretching from the Kentucky border to the Georgia and Alabama borders. Most of the plateau has flat-topped tablelands, though the northern section is slightly more rugged.

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• 2. Native American History And Displacement

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  Archaeological excavations at the Icehouse Bottom site near Vonore revealed that Native Americans were living in East Tennessee on at least a semi-annual basis as early as 7,500 B.C. During the Mississippian period between 1000 A.D. and 1600 A.D., indigenous inhabitants lived in complex agrarian societies at places such as Toqua and Hiwassee Island. They formed a minor chiefdom known as Chiaha in the French Broad Valley.

  Spanish expeditions led by Hernando de Soto, Tristan de Luna, and Juan Pardo visited East Tennessee's Mississippian-period inhabitants during the 16th century. By the early 18th century, most Natives in Tennessee had disappeared, likely wiped out by diseases introduced by the Spaniards. The Cherokee began migrating into what is now East Tennessee from Virginia in the latter 17th century. They established towns concentrated in the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee valleys known as the Overhill towns.

  In the 1830s, white settlers began moving into Cherokee lands in southeast Tennessee. The 1835 Treaty of New Echota stipulated that the Cherokee relocate to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. In 1838 and 1839, U.S. troops forcibly removed nearly 17,000 Cherokees and about 2,000 Black people the Cherokees enslaved from their homes in southeastern Tennessee. An estimated 4,000 died along the way. The operation was orchestrated from Fort Cass in Charleston. In the Cherokee language, the event is called Nunna daul Isunyi, meaning "the Trail Where We Cried".

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• 3. Civil War Sectionalism And Unionism

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  When Tennessee voted on a referendum calling for secession in February 1861, more than 80% of East Tennesseans voted against it. In June 1861, nearly 70% of East Tennesseans voted against the state's second ordinance of secession which succeeded statewide. Along with Sullivan and Meigs counties, there were pro-secession majorities in Monroe, Rhea, Sequatchie, and Polk counties.

  In June 1861, the Unionist East Tennessee Convention met in Greeneville where it drafted a petition demanding that East Tennessee be allowed to form a separate Union-aligned state split off from the rest of Tennessee. The legislature rejected the petition, however, and Tennessee Governor Isham Harris ordered Confederate troops to occupy East Tennessee. Senator Andrew Johnson and Congressman Horace Maynard continuously pressed President Abraham Lincoln to send troops into East Tennessee.

  Union troops under William Rosecrans fled to Chattanooga after being defeated at the Battle of Chickamauga in northwest Georgia in September 1863. Two months later, reinforcements arrived under Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Hooker, and George Henry Thomas. Under Hooker's command, Union troops defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24. The following day Grant and Thomas completely ran the Confederates out of the city at the Battle of Missionary Ridge.

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• 4. Industrialization And The TVA Era

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  The Tennessee Valley Authority was created by Congress during the Great Depression in 1933. It sought to build a series of dams across the Tennessee River watershed to control flooding and bring cheap electricity to East Tennessee. Starting with Norris Dam in 1933, the agency built 10 dams in East Tennessee over a period of two decades. Melton Hill and Nickajack were added in the 1960s, and the last, Tellico Dam, was completed in 1979.

  TVA gained control of TEPCO's assets after a legal struggle in the 1930s with TEPCO president Jo Conn Guild and attorney Wendell Willkie. All of TVA's hydroelectric projects in East Tennessee required the removal of 125,000 Tennessee Valley residents. Residents who refused to sell to the TVA were often forced by court orders and lawsuits. Several dam projects inundated historic Native American sites and American Revolution-era towns.

  East Tennessee's physiographic layout made it the ideal location for uranium enrichment facilities of the Manhattan Project. Starting in 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built what is now the city of Oak Ridge. During the same period, Tennessee Eastman built the Holston Ordnance Works in Kingsport for the manufacture of an explosive known as Composition B. The ALCOA corporation built its North Plant at what is now Alcoa, which was the world's largest plant under a single roof.

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• 5. Atomic Age And Oak Ridge Legacy

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  Oak Ridge became the site of the world's first successful uranium enrichment operations used to construct the world's first atomic bombs. Two of these bombs were dropped on Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. The Department of Defense constructed the Volunteer Ordnance Works in Chattanooga to produce TNT. The region saw rapid growth during this period with thousands of workers moving into newly constructed housing.

  The town of Erwin in the Tri-Cities area is home to Nuclear Fuel Services, which operates a manufacturing and uranium enrichment facility converting Cold War-era weapons uranium into commercially usable reactor fuel for power plants around the United States. It has been the largest supplier of uranium fuel for the United States Navy since 1960.

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• 6. Cultural Birthplace Of Country Music

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  In 1927, the Victor Talking Machine Company conducted recording sessions in Bristol that saw the rise of musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Subsequent recording sessions like the Johnson City sessions in 1928 and the Knoxville St. James Sessions in 1930 proved lucrative. By the late 1930s, the success of the Grand Ole Opry had lured much of the region's talent to Nashville.

  Union County would prove influential to later developments in country music with musicians Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, and Carl Smith who were born in the county. They assisted with the international breakthrough of the genre and the development of the Nashville sound and rockabilly. British folklorist Cecil Sharp visited Flag Pond, Sevierville, Harrogate, and other rural areas in the region during 1916 and 1917 where he transcribed dozens of examples of Old World ballads passed down generation to generation from early English settlers.

  The Ford Show ran on NBC from 1956 until 1961 and was hosted by Tennessee Ernie Ford from Bristol. The television film Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors aired on NBC in 2015. It was inspired by her 1971 song and album of the same name and recounts her childhood in the mountains of East Tennessee. The film received the Tex Ritter Award from the Academy of Country Music.

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