Knoxify

I have lived here, in Knoxville, pretty much my whole life. Yet, I still don’t quite know what all goes into mak­ing Knoxville the city that it is. But, like every­one else, I have my opin­ions on the subject.

First, and fore­most, its peo­ple make Knoxville Knoxville. We, the peo­ple, are an increas­ingly diverse group of peo­ple. Now, we hail from all parts of the world. But, that wasn’t always so. Orig­i­nally, we were pretty insu­lar, with our ances­tors com­ing from Europe by way of the Carolinas.

For a long time, we were noth­ing more than a small, almost for­got­ten town along side the Ten­nessee River. Fre­quently flooded and equally depen­dent upon the river and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side for our survival.

Our area, the reflec­tion of mil­lions of years of change, reflects a won­der­ful diver­sity: flora and fauna often amaz­ing in its splen­dor, some of the world’s old­est exist­ing moun­tains (which, if you haven’t noticed, are still here), and an impor­tant Amer­i­can Indian cul­ture all but wiped out by the white man’s greed for land.

Set­tled by peo­ples from Scot­land, Ire­land of Celtic and Ger­manic her­itage, used to liv­ing on hard lands, the settler’s of East and became self-sufficient and very stub­born. And, even­tu­ally became an impor­tant part of a young country’s history.

Dur­ing the War Between the States, noted civil war his­to­rian Bruce Cat­ton called the East Ten­nessee area the key­stone to the down­fall of the South — not just because of the strong Union sym­pa­thies of its peo­ple, but because East Ten­nessee was a key sup­plier of many sup­plies needed by the South and because it was a sig­nif­i­cant trans­porta­tion hub between north and south. The linch­pin to that key­stone was the siege of Knoxville and its even­tual down­fall in 1863.

Still, Knoxville kept to its sleepy ways, a lit­tle back­wa­ter town on the periph­ery of his­tory, per­haps, unas­sum­ingly mind­ing its own busi­ness, con­fi­dent that it did not need the rest of the world. And, were it not for the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment, Knoxville would prob­a­bly still be small, quiet, and unas­sum­ing — going its own way with­out much regard for the rest of the world, nor it for Knoxville.

It doesn’t seem like much now, but when Con­gress passed the Mor­rill Act of 1862 and the state leg­is­la­ture des­ig­nated it as a land-grant insti­tu­tion after the civil war, what was to become the Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee and the peo­ple and cul­ture of Knoxville and sur­round­ing area would be for­ever linked. And, with the advent of a little-known sport in the late 19th Cen­tury, the rela­tion­ship between the UT Vols and Knoxville grew into a love affair that has few rivals.

Still, Knoxville remained a quiet city — even after the con­tin­u­ing inter­ven­tion of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Three times the feds ven­tured into East Ten­nessee. Three times they changed the land­scape. And three times they dis­lo­cated peo­ple. Once to cre­ate the nation’s most pop­u­lar national park. Once to dam the rivers. And once to end a war. All had their impacts on the region and on the city.

First, in the 20s, the feds cre­ated the Great Smoky Moun­tains National Park. Then, dur­ing the depres­sion, they made the park more than acces­si­ble to the peo­ple. And, a small town became a tourist mecca — though some would say tourist trap. Mil­lions of acres were even­tu­ally taken and a peo­ple and a moun­tain cul­ture per­ma­nently impacted.

Next, the feds cre­ated the Ten­nessee Val­ley Author­ity. Dur­ing the depres­sion, TVA projects pro­vided much needed jobs. They also resulted in much needed elec­tri­cal power and jobs com­ing to the region. And, per­haps most impor­tant to the peo­ple of Knoxville at the time, they stopped the flood­ing that occurred dur­ing the spring rainy sea­sons. Again, large swathes of land were taken and peo­ple dis­lo­cated from their ances­tral homes and livelihoods.

My por­trayal of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment as tak­ing the land and dis­lo­cat­ing peo­ple is not totally unfair. While there were many that under­stood and accepted the neces­sity for these projects, there were many oth­ers that did not. Even to this day, there are those for whom the dis­lo­ca­tion of their fam­i­lies is a sore point. But, how­ever they reacted —favor­ably or not —the birth of the Park, TVA and Oak Ridge have pro­foundly impacted this region and Knoxville.

Nor was that the end of it. Dur­ing World War II, the region and Knoxville area were tapped on the shoul­der once again. Because of its iso­la­tion and the abun­dance of water and elec­tri­cal power, the region was once again asked to give up its land to the feds and peo­ple were asked to leave their homes.

This time, the region became a key com­po­nent for the Man­hat­tan Project — and the birth of the nuclear bomb. The feds cre­ated a city, Oak Ridge, and Oak Ridge became a cen­ter for sci­en­tific research on nuclear nuclear, the envi­ron­ment, com­put­ing and other sci­en­tific endeav­ors… as well as a major envi­ron­men­tal clean-up site.

TVA, head­quar­tered in Knoxville, is spread through out Ten­nessee and sev­eral other south­east­ern states. The Smoky Moun­tains, just to the east of Knoxville, runs up and down the east­ern edge of Ten­nessee and the west­ern edge of North Car­olina. And, Oak Ridge is to the west and just north of Knoxville. None-the-less, each impacts Knoxville in many sig­nif­i­cant ways.

Up until the late 70’s, you could define Knoxville by those event that cre­ated the Park, TVA and Oak Ridge and say with great cer­tainty, that they went a long way toward defin­ing Knoxville, along with the entire metro and East Ten­nessee area. At least until some local peo­ple decided to invite the world to Knoxville.

In 1982, Knoxville had a world’s fair. And, peo­ple came. And, it was a suc­cess. And a fail­ure. And, out if its fail­ures, Knoxville is build­ing a suc­cess again. The fair itself was a suc­cess. But, the impact on Knoxville was a legacy of bank fail­ure and greed that hurt many more. But, it left behind a legacy of fail­ure that took much of the remain­der of the cen­tury to over­come. But, after some 20 years (more or less) I think, Knoxville has over­come is over­com­ing that legacy and is fast on its way to becom­ing — gasp — a big city.

Of course, there is much more to Knoxville’s his­tory and to its peo­ple than what I have said above. But, to me, those are the major points that have made Knoxville Knoxville — its peo­ple, the land, the Uni­ver­sity of Ten­nessee, the Ten­nessee Val­ley Author­ity, Oak Ridge, ad the 1982 Worlds Fair.

There are many other fac­tors as well that go into mak­ing Knoxville what it is. Together, hope­fully, with your par­tic­i­pa­tion and sug­ges­tions, we can explore what it means to be Knoxville and a Knoxvillian.

© 2009 Robert Stock­dale Pho­tog­ra­phy, All Rights Reserved.