Primary City

Tennessee's fourth largest city, Chattanooga enjoys a rich and often contentious past. The city lies on a bend in the Tennessee River near a natural opening in the southern Appalachians. Surrounded by mountains and ridges, the river's banks formed a…

The county seat of Montgomery County and the second oldest municipality in Middle Tennessee, Clarksville is the state's fifth largest city, with a population of 103,455. Established in 1784 by the North Carolina legislature as the seat of Tennessee County…

The second largest city in West Tennessee stands on land acquired by treaty from the Chickasaws on October 19, 1818. The city is located in the geographic center of Tennessee's western district in Madison County, created by the Tennessee General…

Located in the mountainous northeast corner of Tennessee, Johnson City is the seventh largest city in the state, with a population of over 57,000 (1998), and is one of the regional Tri-Cities that includes Kingsport and Bristol. Johnson City has…

Kingsport was the first economically diversified, professionally planned, and privately financed city in twentieth-century America. Neither an Appalachian hamlet nor a company town, Kingsport developed as a self-proclaimed "All-American City." Affected by mergers, buyouts, and shifting economic trends, contemporary Kingsport…

Founded as White's Fort in 1786, Knoxville served as the capital of the Territory South of the River Ohio (or Southwest Territory) and early capital of Tennessee and eventually grew to become the state's third largest city and a major…

The Fourth Chickasaw Bluff, which rises high above the Mississippi River even at flood stage, has long presented a logical place for settlement. Though they had departed prior to Hernando de Soto's expedition through the area in the 1540s, Native…

The sixth largest city in Tennessee, with 68,816 citizens, Murfreesboro is located in Rutherford County, thirty-five miles southeast of Nashville. Adjacent to the west fork of the Stones River, it marks the geographical center of Tennessee. Following over twenty years…

With a population of 545,524 in 2000, Nashville is the capital of Tennessee and a national business, transportation, and tourism center for the United States. The Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County government was organized in 1963, and the downtown stands on the…

Over the years, "the Government" had come to East Tennessee in many forms, varying from the Civil War Confederacy to the Tennessee Valley Authority of the 1930s, but the most dramatic and least public incursion followed quickly on the heels…