Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, United States.[15] As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740,[16] making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state's third-most-populous city after Nashville and Memphis.[17] It is the principal city of the Knoxville metropolitan area, which had a population of 879,773 in 2020.[18]
"Knoxville" redirects here. For other uses, see Knoxville (disambiguation).
Knoxville
United States
1786
1791
1815
104.25 sq mi (270.01 km2)
98.73 sq mi (255.72 km2)
5.52 sq mi (14.30 km2) 5.4%
886 ft (270 m)
190,740
US: 135th
1,931.90/sq mi (745.91/km2)
597,257 (US: 72nd)
1,382.8/sq mi (533.9/km2)
868,546 (US: 64th)
1,096,961 (US: 50th)
Knoxvillian
1648562[12]
First settled in 1786, Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee. The city struggled with geographic isolation throughout the early 19th century; the arrival of the railroad in 1855 led to an economic boom.[19] The city was bitterly divided over the issue of secession during the American Civil War and was occupied alternately by Confederate and Union armies, culminating in the Battle of Fort Sanders in 1863.[19] Following the war, Knoxville grew rapidly as a major wholesaling and manufacturing center. The city's economy stagnated after the 1920s as the manufacturing sector collapsed, the downtown area declined and city leaders became entrenched in highly partisan political fights.[19] Hosting the 1982 World's Fair helped reinvigorate the city,[19] and revitalization initiatives by city leaders and private developers have had major successes in spurring growth in the city, especially the downtown area.[20]
Knoxville is the home of the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee, whose sports teams, the Tennessee Volunteers, are popular in the surrounding area. Knoxville is also home to the headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for East Tennessee, and the corporate headquarters of several national and regional companies. As one of the largest cities in the Appalachian region, Knoxville has positioned itself in recent years as a repository of Appalachian culture and is one of the gateways to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.[21][22]
Infrastructure[edit]
Health[edit]
Knox County's hospital system contains over 2,600 licensed beds in seven general use hospitals and one children's hospital.[100] The city's largest hospital as of 2011 was the University of Tennessee Medical Center, which had 581 beds, followed by Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center (541), Parkwest Medical Center (462), and Physicians Regional (370).[210] The city's largest ambulatory surgery center was the Parkwest Surgery Center, which employed 58 physicians and 35 nurses, followed by the Fort Sanders West Outpatient Surgery Center and the St. Mary's Ambulatory Surgery Center South.[211]
2021 County Health Rankings places Knox county at 13th out the 95 counties. Life expectancy was 76.3 years. Health behaviors noted: 19% smokers versus state average of 21%, 29% of the population is obese vs 33% for the state, excessive drinking is 19% vs 17%, drug overdoses 52 per 100,000 with the state at 28 overdoses per 100,000.[212]
In the 2010s, Knoxville's air quality continued to greatly improve over that of past decades according to the American Lung Association's State of the Air 2017.[213][214]
Utilities[edit]
The Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) provides electricity, water, and wastewater management to Knoxville residents and businesses. KUB's service area covers 688 square miles and includes over 5,200 miles of power lines providing electricity to over 196,000 customers.[215] The average electric bill was just over $96 per month.[216] KUB purchases its electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority.[215]
In popular culture[edit]
Knoxville has appeared in music, literature and television. Film director Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, and the city and East Tennessee are frequently mentioned in his films, such as in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which Bruce Willis' character (and the watch given to him by Christopher Walken's character) is from Knoxville.[232]
In literature, author Cormac McCarthy is from Knoxville, and several of his books feature the city, such as "Suttree", a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel. James Agee also lived in the city, and his 1957 posthumous autobiographical novel A Death in the Family provides a portrait of life in Knoxville, while also wrestling with the death of Agee's father in a car accident, and the impact this had on his family.[233]
Mark Twain wrote about a gunfight in downtown Knoxville involving Joseph Mabry Jr., owner of the city's antebellum Mabry-Hazen House in Life on the Mississippi from 1883. Several other books take place in fictionalized versions of the city, such as the 1915 Anne W. Armstrong novel, The Seas of God,[234] and David Madden's 1974 novel, Bijou, is set in a fictional city known as "Cherokee", based on Knoxville.[235]
The first part of James Herman Robinson's 1950 autobiography, The Road Without Turning, takes place in Knoxville, and "The Man in the Overstuffed Chair", a 1985 short story by playwright Tennessee Williams, gives a brief description of the death of Williams' father, Cornelius, at a Knoxville hospital, and his subsequent burial at Old Gray Cemetery.[236]
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Peter Taylor's last novel in 1994, In the Tennessee Country, refers to a "Knoxville cemetery" where the main character's grandfather (a fictitious politician) is buried. This may refer to Old Gray Cemetery, where Taylor's own grandfather, Governor Robert Love Taylor, was originally buried in 1912.[237]
Swiss travel writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach visited Knoxville in the 1930s, and wrote an essay about the city, "Auf der Schattenseite von Knoxville", which was published in the December 1937 edition of the Swiss magazine, National Zeitung.[238]
A number of songs and music compositions are about or feature Knoxville as well. "The Knoxville Girl", first recorded in 1924, is traditional Appalachian ballad. Classical composer Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" from 1947 is a voice & orchestra piece based on 1938 short prose by James Agee. Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler recorded a song entitled "Daddy's Gone to Knoxville" on his 2002 solo album, The Ragpicker's Dream, "The Ballad of Thunder Road" by Robert Mitchum references Knoxville's Bearden community, and other musicians such as Steve Earle, Ronnie Milsap, and Hank Williams, Jr. have mentioned the city in lyrics. Hank Williams, Hank Jr.'s father, spent his last day alive in Knoxville as well. Country singer Kenny Chesney is from Knoxville.
A number of early country music songs were recorded in Knoxville as the "St. James Sessions" in 1930, such as "Satan is Busy In Knoxville" by Leola Manning.[239][240]
, Republic of Korea
Yesan
, Republic of China
Kaohsiung
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Larissa
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Neuquen
Knoxville has seven sister cities as designated by Sister Cities International:[241]