Knoxify

On the spur of the moment, I decided to attend the Vet­er­ans Day pro­gram at the Ten­nessee Vet­er­ans Ceme­tery this year. Although I drive by the solemn rows of tomb­stones every day, I’d never ven­tured up the hill to the octag­o­nal struc­ture at the top. This year, in the wake of the Fort Hood mas­sacre, I felt moved to do so. I wanted to honor our vet­er­ans in a per­sonal way. My dad, a Korean War vet­eran, went with me to the ser­vice hosted by the Ten­nessee Chap­ter of the State Guard Asso­ci­a­tion of the United States. Nei­ther of us knew what to expect.

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Is there a piece of Knoxville his­tory you’d like to know more about? Ask Chuck or tweet him.

To build the Panama Canal was to move heaven and earth: to bring 360 ft of ele­va­tion of the Cordillera Cen­tral, the con­ti­nen­tal divide, down to sea canal; to push through 48 miles of jun­gle and rivers; to over­come dis­eases med­ical sci­ence did not under­stand; and to replace the 27,500 men who died of these dis­eases to con­tinue build­ing all so a ship from New York could travel 6,000 miles to San Fran­cisco, instead of 14,000. No won­der Theodore Roo­sevelt con­sid­ered it the great­est feat of his pres­i­dency, and many more con­sider it the great­est engi­neer­ing achieve­ment of all time.

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Let’s keep the give­away train mov­ing while it’s hot. Just like yes­ter­day, the first per­son to cor­rectly answer the Knoxville his­tory ques­tion below will win a pair (2) of tick­ets to the Knoxville Twes­t­i­val going down on Sep­tem­ber 10th at the Zoo. You must reply in the com­ments of this post and use your real e-mail address so we may con­tact you (if you win).

Con­grats to Back2Pennyrile for sub­mit­ting the cor­rect answer. It was Charles McClung and Kingston Pike.

In 1792 a sur­vey was com­mis­sioned for the pur­poses of con­struct­ing a high­way from the Knoxville Cour­t­house to the west­ern Knox County line. Who was com­mis­sioned to sur­vey the route, and what was the high­way even­tu­ally named?

All answers sub­mit­ted on Face­book, Twit­ter, or other Knoxify-specific accounts will not be counted in the contest.

Our very own Nicole VanScoten tossed all kinds of Knoxville Twes­t­i­val info your way last week. You going or not?

If you haven’t pur­chased your tick­ets we might just have the per­fect gift for you and it’s not even Christ­mas, yet. The first per­son to cor­rectly answer the Knoxville his­tory ques­tion below will win a pair (2) of tick­ets to the Knoxville Twes­t­i­val going down on Sep­tem­ber 10th at the Zoo. You must reply in the com­ments of this post and use your real e-mail address so we may con­tact you (if you win). Let ‘er rip!

Con­grats to Tim who chimed in with the cor­rect answer of Loveville. In case you’re curi­ous, Loveville turned in to what we know today as Lovell. Thanks to every­one who played. We’ll have another chance to win tomorrow!

In the first half of the 1800’s, what was the first major vil­lage a trav­eler going west along Kingston Pike would encounter after leav­ing Knoxville?

Thanks and good luck to everyone.

All answers sub­mit­ted on Face­book, Twit­ter, or other Knoxify-specific accounts will not be counted in the contest.

This is the sec­ond piece of a two-part series. Get caught up and read the first entry here.

The thrill of vic­tory pulsed through the veins of the KPD offi­cers on the train ride back to Knoxville from Jef­fer­son City. With pho­tographs, received days before by mail, and match­ing ser­ial num­bers from the bank notes in the suspect’s pock­ets with those miss­ing from the Great North­ern Rob­bery, they knew they had their man.

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Hol­ly­wood, the Old West, the coun­try of Bolivia, and most impor­tantly Knoxville, TN. What ties them together here is a movie and a man and if you guessed Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid, then you’ve guessed the movie.

But if Paul New­man or Robert Red­ford come to mind, then guess again.

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Skiers trav­el­ing up to Ober Gatlin­burg via the resort’s aer­ial tramway prob­a­bly never imag­ine that it was Knoxville, and not a ski resort, that was home to the very first ver­sion of that mode of trans­porta­tion in the sky.

Yet in 1894, decades before Ober Gatlin­burg was even a thought, the world’s first aer­ial cable car fer­ried Knoxvil­lians not just across, but high above the Ten­nessee River.

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“How about a two-for-one apple kolacky with your Extra Value Meal?”

For good or for ill, this East­ern Euro­pean ver­sion of a dan­ish is not what you’ll likely find as a dessert option the next time you’re at McDonald’s. But if it hadn’t been for one par­tic­u­larly indus­tri­ous Knoxvil­lian, it just might have been.

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The 1982 World’s Fair gave us more to talk about than just cul­tural exchange, paint­ing robots, and Petro’s. One day after the fair ended the largest Knoxville-based white-collar crime inves­ti­ga­tion in his­tory hit the fan, throw­ing fair-leader Jake Butcher behind bars for bank­ing fraud.

For six months Knoxville basked in the global spot­light, all while catch­ing a new nick­name from the New York Times, “a scruffy lit­tle city”. Per­haps the Times should have orga­nized the event them­selves see­ing as how “scruffy” wasn’t the name-tag you wanted to adorn in the ‘80s.

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So today is the big day, that’s right I’m 30. This is a big day for me as it is the dead­line of sev­eral life goals. A lit­tle his­tory, I grew up in Knoxville, went to Ole Miss, and moved to Den­ver, CO for 3 years, before com­ing back to my home­town to start my busi­ness with my father. I stum­bled upon a few Knoxville bless­ings in my 30 years, below are 100 bless­ings of a 30 year old Knoxville Native, in no order. I could list more, but tried to keep it fun, not too sappy, and true to what we dis­cuss on Knoxify.

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