Northeast Tennessee Fast Facts

Tucked away in Eastern America’s southern highlands lies a region steeped in heritage, rich in culture, and abundant in adventure—a region peaked by lush mountains, enlivened by rushing rivers, and draped in undiscovered territory.

This is where country music was born, and where bluegrass thrives among next-generation musicians. This is the home of Revolutionary War heroes, an American President, and the first settlement west of the 13 colonies. This is where people see “Racin’ the Way it Oughta Be” at Bristol Motor Speedway and hear homespun tales at the National Storytelling Center in Jonesborough.

This is Northeast Tennessee—America’s First Frontier.

• Founded in 1779, Jonesborough is Tennessee’s oldest incorporated town.
• The nation’s first abolitionist publications—The Manumission Intelligencer and the Emancipator—were published in Jonesborough.
• In May 2000, a road construction project in Gray, Tennessee uncovered a four-acre deposit of fossils from more than 5 million years ago. The Gray Fossil Site will soon feature its own museum and visitors’ center.
• The first permanent American settlement outside the original 13 colonies, and the “Articles of the Watauga Association”—the first majority-rule system of American democratic government—was formed in 1772 at Sycamore Shoals (in modern-day Elizabethton).
• Bristol Caverns was once an underground river used by Native Americans to attack settlers and swiftly disappear. The largest series of caverns in the Smoky Mountain region.
• The Clinch and Powell Rivers in Hancock County are considered the two cleanest rivers in the United States. The Clinch River has a 13-mile stretch designated as a freshwater mussel sanctuary. This area is widely noted for more species of mussels than any other section of river in the U.S.
• In 1916, after a crazed circus elephant killed her trainer, the animal was hanged from a railroad derrick in Erwin. The elephant was buried on railroad property near where she died.
• In 1785, Greeneville became the capital of the State of Franklin — the nation’s 14th state. However, the state was never admitted to the United States, since its founder shunned North Carolina’s claims of sovereignty over it.
• The Ebbing and Flowing Spring in Rogersville is one of only two known in the world with its peculiar “tidal” characteristic. The process takes 2 hours and 47 minutes, ranging from an indiscernible trickle to a flow of 500 gallons per minute. The spring maintains a constant 34° temperature.
• Kingsport was the first planned city in America.
• Built in 1882, the Doe River Covered Bridge in Elizabethton, is believed to be the oldest such bridge in the state still used daily.
• Jenkins wild cranberry bog in Johnson County is one of the last survivors of bogs that once covered an estimated 10,000 acres in Shady Valley.
• Over 1.5 million lights illuminate Bristol Motor Speedway during the winter months as Speedway in Lights captures the holiday spirit.
• In 1881, the center of Main Street, now State Street, was designated as the state line for Tennessee/Virginia by the city councils. Presently, along State Street in Bristol, metal plates following the centerline mark the exact boundary between these two famous cities.
• Butler Museum tells the story of the Town of Butler, “the town that would not drown.”
• St. John Milling Company in Watauga is the oldest continuously operating mill in the state, 1779.