Eastern Tennessee

East Tennessee is a region of Tennessee that covers roughly the eastern third of the state, generally locations east of the edge of the Cumberland Plateau.

Overview

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Essential Destinations

Top destinations include Knoxville and Chattanooga.

Knoxville

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Knoxville, in Knox County, is the third-largest city in Tennessee. It is the home of the University of Tennessee's primary campus and site of the 1982 World's Fair.

Chattanooga

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Chattanooga is the 4th largest city in Tennessee. It is the seat of Hamilton County. It is in Southeast Tennessee on the Tennessee River and near the border of Georgia.

Oak Ridge is a city in Tennessee. Oak Ridge was created as secret city during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. In Oak Ridge, thousands worked in secrecy to enrich the uranium used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Destinations to Discover

Explore places such as Johnson City and Kingsport.

Johnson City

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Johnson City is a city in Eastern Tennessee. With a population of 71,000 in 2020, the city is the 8th largest in the state.

Kingsport

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Kingsport is a city in Sullivan and Hawkins counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It lies along the Holston River and had a population of 55,442 at the 2020 census.

Bristol

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Bristol is a city in Sullivan County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 27,147 at the 2020 census. It is the twin city of Bristol, Virginia, which lies directly across the state line between Tennessee and Virginia.

Kingston

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Kingston is a city in Tennessee. This seat of Roane County was a frontier town back in 1792 centered around Fort Southwest Point. In 1807, it was actually the Tennessee state capital for a day, too, before the Tennessee General Assembly reconvened in Nashville.

Elizabethton

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Elizabethton is a city of 13,5000 people in Eastern Tennessee. Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government west of the Eastern Continental Divide and of the original Thirteen Colonies.

Dayton

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Dayton is a city in and the county seat of Rhea County, Tennessee, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 7,065. The Dayton Urban Cluster includes developed areas adjacent to the city and extends south to Graysville.

Cleveland

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Cleveland is the county seat of Bradley County, Tennessee. As of 2020, the population was 45,902. Just like in other areas of the South, Native Americans such as the Cherokees were forced to cede their tribal homelands and move west in what was termed "The Trail Of Tears", in which many died.

Sevierville

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Sevierville is a city in eastern Tennessee. Pronounced "Severe-ville" and named after Colonel John Sevier after his successful campaign in running off the Cherokee inhabitants around 1780, Sevierville was surprisingly anti-secessionist and abolitionist up to and during the Civil War but ended up being pillaged quite badly.

Maryville

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Maryville is a city in and the county seat of Blount County, Tennessee. Its population was 31,907 at the 2020 census.

Morristown

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Morristown is in Eastern Tennessee. Settled in the years just after the Revolutionary War, around 1787, Davy Crockett once lived here. Prior to the Civil Rights era, Morristown had one of the only two colleges in eastern Tennessee established for African Americans, called Morristown College.

Greeneville

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Greeneville is a small town in Tennessee that was the political base of President Andrew Johnson. You can visit two of his homes and his burial place here.

Crossville

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Crossville is a city in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Tennessee, United States. It is part of the Crossville Micropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 12,071 at the 2020 census.

Pigeon Forge

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Pigeon Forge is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee, 5 mi north of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Newport

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Newport is a city in Tennessee with a history of bootlegging and a bit of desperation to make it out of poverty in Appalachia. Though it went through a lot of ups and downs over the years, there aren't a whole lot of singular attractions to visit here.

Gatlinburg

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Gatlinburg is a resort town located in eastern Tennessee. It is a gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Downtown Gatlinburg may come as somewhat of a shock for those on their way to a nature getaway in the national park — from the Space Needle to the amusement rides, the town hasn't necessarily chosen to embrace its "nature" side.

Dollywood is a major attraction located on the border between Pigeon Forge and Sevierville. It consists of DreamMore Resort, Dollywood Cabins, Dollywood Amusement Park, and Dollywood's Splash Country. It was founded by local icon Dolly Parton in 1961.