History of Knoxville, Tennessee

[1] Knoxville became the first capital of the State of Tennessee in 1796, and grew steadily during the early 19th century as a way station for westward-bound migrants and as a commercial center for nearby mountain communities.[6] The Spanish expedition of Hernando de Soto is believed to have traveled down the French Broad Valley and visited the Bussell Island village in 1540 en route to the Mississippi River.By the early 1700s, traders from South Carolina were visiting the Overhill towns regularly, and following the discovery of Cumberland Gap in 1748, long hunters from Virginia began pouring into the Tennessee Valley.The fort, which originally stood along modern State Street, consisted of four heavily timbered cabins connected by an 8-foot (2.4 m) palisade, enclosing one-quarter acre of ground.[13]: 6–7 James White set aside land for a new town, which initially consisted of the area now bounded by Church Avenue, Walnut Street, First Creek, and the river, in what is now Downtown Knoxville.[15] On October 3, 1791, a lottery was held for those wishing to purchase lots in the new city, which was named "Knoxville" in honor of Blount's superior, Secretary of War Henry Knox.[13]: 12 Abishai Thomas, an associate of Blount who visited Knoxville in 1794, noted that the city was full of taverns and tippling houses, no churches, and that the blockhouse's jail was overcrowded with criminals.In January 1796, delegates from across Tennessee, including Blount, Sevier, and Andrew Jackson, convened in Knoxville to draw up a constitution for the new state, which was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796.[21] Illinois governor John Reynolds, who studied law in Knoxville, recalled a raucous, anti-British celebration held in the city on July 4, 1812, at the onset of the War of 1812.Known as the "Great Western Line," the route ran westward from Raleigh, North Carolina, over the mountains to Knoxville, and then continued west to Nashville.[27] In 1842, English travel writer James Gray Smith reported that the city was home to a university, an academy, a "ladies' school," three churches, two banks, two hotels, 25-30 stores, and several "handsome country residences" occupied by people "as aristocratic as even an Englishman... could possibly desire.[32]: 49 Brownlow's attacks drove Whig-turned-Democrat John Hervey Crozier from public life,[33]: 289–290 and forced two directors of the failed Bank of East Tennessee, A.R.[31]: 72 Following the attack on Fort Sumter in April, Governor Isham Harris made moves to align the state with the Confederacy, prompting the region's Unionists to form the East Tennessee Convention, which met at Knoxville on May 30, 1861.[35] In a second statewide vote on June 8, 1861, a majority of East Tennesseans still rejected secession,[31]: 80–82 but the measure succeeded in Middle and West Tennessee, and the state thus joined the Confederacy.On September 1, the vanguard of Union general Ambrose Burnside entered the city to great fanfare (the unit briefly chased future mayor Peter Staub through the streets).[37]: 84 Oliver Perry Temple joyously ran behind the soldiers the length of Gay Street,[36] and pro-Union Mayor James C. Luttrell raised a large American flag he had saved for the occasion.[37]: 213 In April 1864, the East Tennessee Union Convention reconvened in Knoxville, and while its delegates were badly divided, several, including Brownlow and Maynard, supported a resolution recognizing the Emancipation Proclamation.[42]: 208–210 The following year, Charles McClung McGhee and several investors purchased the city's two major railroads and merged them into the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway, which would eventually control over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of tracks in five states.The square's most notable business was Peter Kern's ice cream saloon and confections factory, which hosted numerous festivals for various groups in the late 19th century.[56]: 102 Journalist Jack Neely points out that "saloons, whorehouses, cocaine parlors, gambling dens, and poolrooms" lined Central Street from the railroad tracks to the river.Racial tensions heightened as poor whites and blacks competed for the few available jobs, and both the Ku Klux Klan and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) opened chapters in the city.[13]: 48–9 The natural resources of the surrounding region were either exhausted or their demand fell sharply, and the decline of railroads in favor of other forms of shipping led to the collapse of the city's wholesaling sector.[44]: 36 Historian Bruce Wheeler suggests that the city's overly provincial economic "elite," which had long demonstrated a disdain for change, and the masses of new rural ("Appalachian") and African-American migrants, both of whom were suspicious of government, formed an odd alliance that consistently rejected major attempts at reform.[13]: 61–3 During World War II, the construction of Manhattan Project facilities in nearby Oak Ridge brought thousands of federal workers to the area, and helped boost Knoxville's economy.[13]: 63 The school's campus expanded to cover the entire area between Cumberland Avenue and the river west of Second Creek, and the Fort Sanders neighborhood was largely converted into student housing.[44]: 131–6 Large parts of the downtown area continued to deteriorate, and nearly half of all houses in the city's older neighborhoods were considered substandard and in a critical state of decline.[67] The efforts of developers such as Kristopher Kendrick and David Dewhirst, who have purchased and restored numerous dilapidated buildings, gradually helped lure residents back to the Downtown area.Modern works include Digby Gordon Seymour's Divided Loyalties: Fort Sanders and the Civil War (1963) and Robert McKenzie's Lincolnites and Rebels (2006).Mark Banker's Appalachians All (2010) discusses the development of three East Tennessee communities, Knoxville, Cades Cove, and the Clearfork Valley (in Campbell and Claiborne counties).Arcadia has published several short books on local topics as part of its "Images of America" series, including Ed Hooper's WIVK (2008) and WNOX (2009), and 1982 World's Fair (2009) by Martha Rose Woodward.