Industry

Located in Warren County, Rock Island State Park was established in 1969, but its historical significance dates to the region's early settlement. A small village called Rock Island, located upstream from the park's boundaries, was the county's first permanent settlement…

Marvin T. Runyon, past president of Nissan, U.S.A., chairman of the board of Tennessee Valley Authority, and postmaster general, was born in Ft. Worth, Texas, on September 16, 1924. He did not become a Tennessean until 1980, but in the…

Born in 1850 in Indiana, Newell Sanders moved as an adult to Chattanooga at the encouragement of General John T. Wilder. Recognizing the need in the South for reliable farm machinery, Wilder encouraged Sanders to produce plows. His Chattanooga Plow…

On July 31, 1985, Governor Lamar Alexander announced that a new General Motors company--Saturn--would build a giant industrial complex in Spring Hill, a small town located thirty miles south of Nashville on U.S. Highway 31 in northern Maury County. Spring…

In 1852 Gillen, Webb, and Company established Sylvan Mills on the Duck River outside of Shelbyville as a woven cotton fabric mill. It produced fabric from raw cotton throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the early 1920s,…

In the 1760s Anglo-American frontiersmen, determined to settle the land, planted slavery firmly within the borders of what would become Tennessee. Over time, East Tennessee, hilly and dominated by small farms, retained the fewest number of slaves. Middle Tennessee, where…

Frederick W. Smith was born on August 11, 1944, in Marks, Mississippi, to Frederic C. and Sally (Wallace) Smith. He earned a B.A. in economics from Yale University in 1966 and earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and two…

In 1884 two mechanics in Jackson established the Southern Engine and Boiler Works to build a line of small engines and boilers. In 1895 the mechanics sold their shop to local stockholders, who constructed a new complex on North Royal…

Under the leadership of E. J. Owens, Southern Potteries, Inc., began operations in Erwin in Unicoi County in 1916-17 using skilled labor brought from Ohio and local unskilled workers. Its product was known as Clinchfield ware, and the company's letterhead…

With the end of the Civil War and restoration of communications and travel, investors identified and then developed many of the resources of the South. A land agent for the Stearns Salt and Lumber Company of Ludington, Michigan, traveling through…

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition, held in Nashville in 1897 to celebrate Tennessee's one-hundredth anniversary of statehood, was one of the largest and grandest of a series of industrial expositions that became hallmarks of the New South era. Modeled in particular…

In the 1880s George Eastman (1854-1932) founded Kodak, a camera and photographic film manufacturer based in Rochester, New York. His Eastman Kodak Company was a multinational corporation that soon dominated the film market and led the way in the mass…

Representative of the many textile mills that opened in Middle Tennessee in the early twentieth century, Tennessee Knitting Mills began operations in Columbia, Tennessee, in June 1931 as Massachusetts Knitting Mills. In that year, a group of Bostonians led by…

Robert Latendresse began Tennessee Shell Company in Camden in 1954 to ship Tennessee mollusk shells to Japan. There the shells were cut, ground into round beads, and inserted by Japanese pearl farmers into mollusks in Japan's waters to be the…

Although recommended as early as the 1870s, a state forest system received its first impetus in 1900 when President William McKinley asked for a report on the natural resources of the Southern Appalachians, including Tennessee. In response to the report's…

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is an independent public corporation founded by Congress in 1933 to control flooding, improve navigation, assist farmers, provide cheap electric power, and make "surveys of and general plans for [the Tennessee River] basin and adjoining…

Chattanooga businessman and industrialist Benjamin F. Thomas pioneered the development of the Coca-Cola bottling industry in America. A native of Maysville, Kentucky, Thomas began his business career as a bank clerk, stone quarry operator, and manager of a hosiery mill.…

Although Tennessee's earliest settlers appreciated the vast timber resources they discovered, the greatest timber extraction in the state's history occurred between 1880 and 1920. Rapid deforestation by industrial loggers during this period caused long-term environmental changes and notable revision of…

The first Methodist publishing efforts began as the Methodist Book Concern in Philadelphia in 1789 with a loan of $600. Its publications were delivered by traveling preachers known as circuit riders. The Concern later relocated to New York City and…

A significant reminder of the importance of the iron industry to Chattanooga's growth is the United States Pipe and Foundry Company, one of Chattanooga's oldest manufacturing establishments and a familiar landmark on the city's skyline. The company's owners, David Giles…