The History on the Tour

If this is your first trip I’ll tell you a little about the town. Knoxville has a population of 174,000. The population of Knox County is 382,000. The 9 counties in the greater Knoxville Area has a combined populations of 804,000 people-that is a little over 14% of the entire population living in the state of Tennessee. Knoxville’s city center sits 936 feet above sea level. We receive about 50 inches of rain a year. Generally we see about 12 inches or so of snowfall in the winter. Out temperatures average out at about 60 degrees year round with highs generally in the 90’s and the lows in the teens to lower 20’s.

As we move away from the dock take a look towards downtown. Today you see a modern highway and buildings dominating the skyline. 70 years ago, however, Knoxville and the river had an entirely different look. Houseboats were nestled along the river’s edge all down through here. The steep hill rising up from the river was dotted with shacks and shotguns houses packed so tightly together that there was barely room to walk between them.

Up ahead you will see the Gay Street Bridge. This was the first “modern” highway bridge built over the river and is the oldest one still in use. The Youngstown Bridge Company built in 1897. There used to be an island just this side of the bridge in the middle of the river. It was quite shallow here and during times of low water, farmers would drive their cattle across the river towards the Farmer’s Market in downtown. With the coming of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930’s the river was cleared and deepened to promote the commerce of barge traffic.

On the hill just to the right of the Gay Street Bridge right at the base of the big glass skyscraper, you will see a white frame house. This is Blount Mansion and was the home of William Blount. It was built in 1792 and was the second frame home built west of the Mountains in what is today Tennessee. The first is the Carter Mansion up in Elizabethton in the northeast corner of the state. All the material to build Blount Mansion was shipped in by boat from Virginia or hauled over the mountains from North Carolina. The Cherokee called it the “house with a thousand eyes” because of all the windows. The house is currently opened for tours.

President George Washington appointed William Blount as the Governor of the territory Southwest of the River Ohio when the territory was formed in 1790. Back in those days, you had to be a territory before you could become a state. Blount was selected to be governor because he had become familiar to President Washington when he served as a paymaster during the Revolutionary War. Blount had been a representative of the state of North Caroline and signed the Constitution of the United States the year prior. Blount also was a land speculator who had already purchased vast tracts of land in this region so who better to govern the land than the person who already owned most of it.

When appointed territorial governor in 1790, Blount established the capital in the home of William Cobb, which was called Rocky Mount, just north of present day Johnson City, Tennessee. Part of his duties as governor was to also serve as the Indian Agent to the Cherokee Indians. In this role he negotiated the Treaty of the Holston in July of 1791 right on the very ground you boarded the Star of Knoxville a few minutes ago. There is a monument just a few yards from the parking lot that you can visit when we return to shore.

In the treaty the Cherokee agreed that “perpetual peace and friendship were restored and established between all the citizens of the United States and the whole Cherokee Nation of Indians”. The Cherokee also agreed to return all prisoners they had held—some for many years. Lastly, most of the eastern half of what is now the state of Tennessee was passed from the Cherokee to the United States government.

While here for the treaty signing, Blount was so impressed by the area and the fledgling community that was growing around James White Fort, which had been established in 1786, that he resolved to move the capital of the territory to this site. He began the construction of his new home the following spring. There is a reconstruction of White’s Fort down the hills from Blount Mansion that can be toured.

Next to the mansion is the small office where Blount conducted the business of the territory and where the Constitution of the United States was drafted. A territory had to have 60,000 inhabitants task of lobbying congress to grant statehood to the territory.

Tennessee followed Vermont and Kentucky in joining the union and became the 16^th state on June 1, 1796. John Sevier was elected the first Governor of Tennessee and William Blount went on to become US Senator. Knoxville continued to serve as Tennessee’s capital until 1811 when it was moved to Nashville.

How did Knoxville get its name? Well, as Indian agent, Governor Blount answered to Henry Knox, the Secretary of War in President Washington’s cabinet. It never hurts to butter up the boss you know even 200 years ago-and Blount did exactly that by naming the town after him.

The next bridge we will pass under is the Henley Street Bridge. This bridge was built in 1930’s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal WPA job program-that’s the Works Progress Administration. The bridge is known as the “upside down bridge” because all the supporting structures are underneath the bridge itself.

The bridge has accent lighting and it is a beautiful site on a calm night when the lights reflect off the river. The lighting was installed by the same company that did the accent lighting for the Statue of Liberty. On Labor Day each year, the bridge is closed down and serves as the launching pad for an event called “Booms Day”. Several hundred thousand people line the riverbank as darkness approaches to watch the biggest fireworks display in the southeast.

The third bridge we pass under is the CSX Railroad Bridge. The piers that support the bridge are carved from East Tennessee Marble. They were hand hewn from a quarry a few miles upstream from our dock. The marble quarries that those rocks came from are quite famous. Indeed, the marble from this area has been used in the construction of buildings all over the world including the Capital building in Washington DC. John Sevier had a home near the marble fields when he served as Tennessee’s first governor. He called it “Marble Springs” and is open daily for tours.

Railroads first came to Knoxville in 1855 and Construction on this bridge started just before the Civil War but had to be halted because of the hostilities. Controlling the bridge was the primary target of both armies. The bridge was finally completed in the 1880’s.

East Tennessee sent more men into the Confederacy than any other southern state except North Carolina. We sent more men into the Union Army than four northern states. East Tennessee remained loyal to the Union after the state seceded in 1861- Tennessee was the last to secede. In fact, the county just north of Knoxville is called Union County. Several books have been published recently that tells the story of the War’s affect on people who lived in the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. The books tell the stories of the Bridge Burners, the Bushwhackers. And the many, many men in the western part of the state who were conscripted into the Confederacy and were forced to fight against the Union Army that they actually supported.

The nickname “Tennessee Volunteers” got started during the early part is the 1800’s and we gave distinguished ourselves all through the nation’s history by providing men to fight when the country was challenged. From the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780 to the War of 1812 to the Alamo to the Civil Ware, the Spanish American War, World War I and II, to Korea to Vietnam and to the Gulf War, Tennessee has answered the call by sending her young men off to fight. Famous sons like John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, Alvin York, and Cordell Hull, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for establishing the United Nations, have helped shape America and define the character of this country.

If you will look to our starboard side- that ‘s the right side of the boat, as you look downstream, you will see the University of Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium-the home of the Tennessee Volunteers football team. You are looking at the 2^nd largest football stadium in the United States. We had the record a couple of years ago, but Michigan State added some more seats to take over5 the lead and holds the record for now. Neyland Stadium seats over 107,000 spectators. We have a running joke here in Knoxville…When there is a home football game we are the 5^th largest city in the state.

On past the stadium is Thompson Bowling Arena-home of the Lady Vols’ basketball team and their legendary coach, Pat Head Summit. The Lady Vols’ are the only women’s basketball team to ever win three consecutive national championships’- 1996, 1997 and 1998. A total of six national championship banners hang from the ceiling. The arena holds some 25,000 fans-about the same number of students who attend the university. The Lady Vols’ lead the nation in attendance to their home games.

Looking off the port side – the left side of the boar just beyond the rip rap along the river bank, you will see the old concrete pier.  That is Knoxville’s first steamboat wharf. It has been there since the1820’s. You can still see the iron ballads on top. If you look at the square indentations in the concrete, you’ll see the iron rings. These are called Steamboat Rings because they were used to tie their boats up.

The heyday of the steamboat was from the 1820’s until the railroads came about the time of the Civil War. The first steamboat, named the “Atlas” arrived in Knoxville in 1826.  In the next decade it was renamed the “Cherokee Chief’ and was one of the steamboats that transported the Cherokee Indians to Oklahoma during the Trails of Tears Removal in the winter of 1838 and 1839.

On your right is the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus and Veterinary School. The flower gardens you see are actually research gardens. The paved pathway running the bank is part of the 3^rd Creek Bicycle Trail that connects several parts of this end of town. A new task force has just been formed to prepare a master plan for Greenway’s, trails and parks that will link together the Knoxville area and the eight counties that surround us.

The huge concrete bridge coming up is called the Buck Karns Bridge. It is crossed by Alcoa Highway which leads to the Knoxville Airport and the towns of Alcoa and Maryville and to the Great Smokey Mountains. Alcoa takes its name from the Aluminum Company of America, which player such an important role during the war effort in World War II. German spies were actually captured at the aluminum plant during the height of the war. The bridge is named for Knoxville resident, James Karns. He was one of the six WWI Congressional Medal of Honor winners that came from Tennessee.

You see those large numbers painted on the bridge piers? They tell us how many feet of clearance there is between the water level and underside of the bridge.

On your left is more University of Tennessee land. These lands are used for agricultural research on crops such as corn.

On your right you will see “Sequoyah Hills”. For over a century and a half this area has served as home for some of the wealthiest and influential residents of Knoxville. The neighborhood is named for the Cherokee Indian Sequoyah who was born in 1770 in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee about 40 miles south of here on the little Tennessee River. Sequoyah gained world fame because he was the first individual known to have ever devised a totally new system of writing.