Transportation

The first scheduled airline operations in Tennessee began on December 1, 1925, when a route between Atlanta and Evansville included a stop in Chattanooga. For the next ten years, however, air traffic and airports grew slowly in Tennessee. In 1932,…

New South railroad entrepreneur Jere Baxter challenged the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad's control over Middle Tennessee commerce by building the Tennessee Central Railroad to connect Nashville and Knoxville. Baxter was born in 1852, the son of a prominent Nashville…

Located on the Tennessee River between Meigs and Rhea Counties, Blythe Ferry dates to about 1809 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Its original owner and operator was William Blythe, a mixed-ancestry Native American with both…

Milton Brown, chancellor, congressman, and railroad president, migrated to Nashville from his home in Ohio in 1823 and studied law in the office of Felix Grundy. Upon admission to the bar, he practiced law in Paris, Tennessee, and in 1832…

Names for this company have changed through the years, but the early factory site off Murfreesboro Pike in Nashville has not, and the importance of this plant cannot be overstated. Nashville's Mayor Thomas Cummings (elected 1938) induced Aviation Corporation of…

The Carolina, Clinchfield, and Ohio (CC&O) Railway, best known as the Clinchfield Railroad, provided the "Quick Service, Short Route between the Central West and Southeast," crossing the Appalachian Mountains and opening the communities along its 277-mile route to distant markets…

George L. Carter, rail and coal magnate and founder of modern Kingsport, shaped the economic transformation of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. Known as the "empire builder of Southwest Virginia," Carter built the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway and envisioned…

This landmark Chattanooga hotel located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga initially served as the Southern Railway Terminal. Designed by Beaux-Arts-trained architect Donn Barber of New York City, this magnificent architectural gateway to the Deep South opened during the Christmas…

The Chester Inn is a historic tavern building in Jonesborough, Washington County; it is one of the oldest extant buildings in Tennessee's oldest town. Dr. William P. Chester built the original Federal-style inn circa 1797-98. The frame building measures eighty-two…

Edmund "King" Cole, a leading late nineteenth-century railroad entrepreneur, financier, and philanthropist, was born in Giles County, a descendent of a prominent Virginia family. Cole's father died when he was three months old, leaving his mother with a large family…

Tennessee's early patterns of commercial exchange determined the location and growth of its urban centers. Commercial centers typically formed at some junction of land and water that required a break in the mode of transportation, usually from animal-powered overland wagons…

From its headwaters in Lechter County, Kentucky, to its mouth at Smithland on the Ohio River, the Cumberland River travels almost 700 miles and drains a watershed of 18,000 square miles. Over 300 miles of the river flow through Tennessee,…

Constructed between 1915 and 1927, the Dixie Highway was part of the new road system built in response to the growing number of motorists in the early decades of the twentieth century. When completed, the highway extended from Ontario, Canada,…

The drive-in movie theater was the creation of Richard M. Hollingshead Jr., whose family owned and operated the R. M. Hollingshead Corporation chemical plant in Camden, New Jersey. Hollingshead began experimenting with the idea in his backyard by hanging a…

This Obion County airfield began operations as a training base for aviation cadets in 1942. The land was acquired in early March, construction proceeded immediately, and the first class arrived in July 1942. Riddle-McKay Aviation School of Florida, a private…

The largest express transportation company in the world is FedEx, headquartered in Memphis. Frederick W. Smith, a Memphis businessman and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, began a company named Federal Express in April 1973 with fourteen small aircraft flying from the…

Tennessee contains 19,200 miles of streams, including 1,062 miles of navigable waterways. These streams initially served as a major means of transportation that allowed early settlers access to markets and permitted travel between isolated communities. Future urban centers such as…

Originally envisioned as a 71-mile scenic route paralleling the Tennessee boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Foothills Parkway is the oldest unfinished highway project in Tennessee. The origins of the parkway stemmed from the federal government's decision…

By the early twentieth century, the inadequate road system in Tennessee, and the South generally, was impeding the region's economic progress. Dust in the dry season and mud in the wet, delays in waiting for ferries to cross the many…

Hales Bar Dam has the distinction of being the first main-river, multipurpose dam built on the Tennessee River. In order to improve navigation on the Upper Tennessee and provide electricity to the city of Chattanooga, Jo Conn Guild Sr., a…