The eastern wall of the Valley is formed by the Smoky or Unaka Mountains, towering, in massive grandeur, more than six thousand feet above the sea.  The great domes of these mountains are the culminating points of land on the eastern half of the American continent.

The western wall of the Valley is known as the Cumberland Table Lands, being, in fact, a great plateau many miles broad and from two to three thousand feet above the ocean level.

The floor of the Valley lies in a tilted position, the upper end being many hundreds of feet higher than its southwestern outlet, while the average elevation is about one thousand feet above tide water.

It is not smooth or plain-like as might be conjectured, for from one end to the other there is a series of parallel ridges and broken hills, many of them several hundred feet high, giving to the surface what is termed a "fluted form."  Between these ridges are beautiful vales and low, sloping hills.  It is in one of these vales, with its undulating surface a thousand feet above sea level, that Knoxville is situated.

Plan and Appearance of the City

As has already been stated, Knoxville stands in the center of the Great Valley of East, Tennessee upon a series of gently sloping hills, which rise in the midst of one of the many lovely vales for which the Great Valley is noted.  Around this vale, and overlooking the city in all directions, are many higher hills and ridges, some of them with bold precipitous sides.  Upon the southern side of the city is the Tennessee River, as beautiful a stream as ever mirrored the stars of heaven.  Half a mile northward from the river and parallel to it is a basin-like depression of the surface through which the chief railroads enter the city.  Between the river and the railroad basin, the contour of the ground is ridge-like, rising, in places, two hundred feet above the river.  Two creeks cut through this ridge at right angles and reach the river in almost straight lines half a mile apart.  North of the railroad basin, the ground slopes very gently for about a mile to the top of another ridge.  Eastward and westward this basin is nearly uniform in grade.  The peculiar contour of the ground, aided by the two creeks and the river, insures the most perfect surface drainage, and contributes very largely to the healthfulness of the city.  The two creeks and the railroad basin divide the city, naturally, into six sections, North, South, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and Northwest, and these designations, with the decimal system of house numbering recently adopted, enter into all business and residence addresses.  Each of these sections contains a fine residence center, in which are many beautiful and costly homes, but the chief business center is in the South section, that is, between the two creeks, the railroad and the river.

The Water Supply

One of the most important considerations to the home seeker about to move to a new country is the purity and abundance of the water supply.  No section upon the globe is more singularly blessed in this regard than Knoxville and every part of her Great Valley.

From every vale and mountain side thousands of bold, clear springs pour forth their cooling streams with the same lavishness that characterizes all the other works of Nature in this locality.  There are bold mountain torrents foaming over stony beds and leaping over precipices, eager to pour their waters into the Great Valley; there are beautiful brooks winding slowly through fertile fields and fragrant meadows; there are yet larger streams, filled with toothsome trout, which wend their way down the valley, gathering strength and volume as they go.  There is yet one larger stream, the placid Tennessee, whose mirrored surface reflects the hills and spires of the city as it rolls majestically by on its way to the Mississippi.  To this stream all others of the Valley are tributary, and such is the formation of the country that ere the Tennessee leaves the Valley to enter Alabama, the waters from four different States have mingled in its channel.

The very best water-power sites are found upon all these streams from one end of the Valley to the other.

There are also many valuable mineral springs, several of which have long since acquired an almost national reputation for their curative and invigorating properties.   These springs, as Summer Resorts, are annually visited by hundreds of people from States north, south, east and west.  The most noted are the Epsom waters of "Tate," the Chalybeate waters of "White Cliff," "Montvale," "Lea's," and the White Sulphur of "Rhea's."

Most of these springs are situated in beautiful groves, surrounded by shady lawns in the heart of the Great Valley, but others flow out on the mountain tops in the midst of the most gorgeous scenery.  That of "White Cliff" is on one of the divisions of the eastern wall, three thousand feet above the sea.  There are many other Summer Resorts on these mountains, with and without mineral waters, that of Roane Mountain, more than six thousand feet above the ocean, being a notable example.  Here, in the hottest days, the thermometer never gets above the sixties, and at night, fires and thick covering are constantly required.

Magnificent Scenery

The scenery of the Great Valley of East Tennessee is not surpassed by any other in the world.  This is equally true whether it be viewed from the hills in and around the city or from the tops of the great mountains upon either side.  The poet's verse and the artist's brush have long since immortalized the beautiful vales and the rivers of the Great Valley.  The mountains, as seen from Knoxville, lack the massiveness of form and the great altitudes of the Alps and the Rockies, but there is a beauty and harmony of outline in the vast stretch of landscape that at once captivates all beholders.  The Valley, when once seen from any one of the great domes upon the eastern wall, is a picture that can never be forgotten.  Standing upon one of these great elevations, four thousand feet above the ocean, and looking down and out, the Great Valley spreads away in all directions like some vast plain, or a stretch of some silent sea.

Far away to the west, in the extreme background of the picture, a high blue wall is seen kissing the sky; this is the western confine of the Valley.  Beyond this tall, blue line is Kentucky.

Far away to the right and left the picture slowly fades away behind the blue, transparent atmosphere of the Tennessee mountains.  Ninety miles away, on the right, beyond the deepest shadow in the picture, lies Virginia.  Ninety miles away, on the left, beyond where the fan-shaped rays of sunlight are piercing the borders of a distant cloud, is Georgia.  At our feet and back, the great gorges in the mountains open wide their enormous throats, a thousand feet in depth; out of these the precipitous sides of the great mountains raise their massive shoulders more than two thousand feet above us.  Behind their great domes is North Carolina.

This beautiful valley was once the home and hunting grounds of the Indians.  From those far away hills, three thousand feet below us, the smoke of their chase signals answered one to another.  To them it was typical of their Happy Hunting Grounds.

Heroically they resisted the encroachments of the white face upon it a century and a quarter ago.  Bitterly they turned to look upon it for the last time as they took up their march towards the setting sun, leaving their brave dead asleep in the beautiful vales they had died to defend.

But all this is as it should be, for the Great Valley was destined to cradle a mightier race, whose industries and commerce should touch the boundaries of the farthest shores.  The brighter colored spots we see scattered over the Valley as far as the eye can reach, show the work of the white man who succeeded the Indians, for these are fields of waving grain.  The darker colored patches, which intervene, are remnants, of once unbroken forests; their outlines are eloquent of what has been done.  The great columns of smoke rising from the center of the Valley are from the furnaces of modern progress and are prophetic of what it is to be.

Several years ago the lamented Landon C. Haynes, one of Tennessee's most eloquent sons, in his famous after-dinner speech at Jackson, Miss., paid this beautiful tribute to the home of his birth:

"I was born in East Tennessee on the banks of the Watauga, which, in the Indian vernacular, means 'beautiful river,' and beautiful river it is.  I have stood upon its banks in my childhood and looked down through its glassy waters and have seen a Heaven below, and then looked up and beheld a Heaven above, reflecting, like two mirrors each in the other, its moons and planets and trembling stars.  Away from its banks of rock and cliff, hemlock and laurel, and pine and cedar, stretches a vale back to the distant mountains as beautiful and exquisite as any in Italy or Switzerland.  There stands the great Unicoi, the great Black and the Great Smoky mountains, among the loftiest in the United States of America, on whose summits the clouds gather of their own accord even in the brightest day.

There I have seen the great spirit of the storm, after noontide, go and take his evening nap in his pavillion of darkness and of clouds.  I have there seen him arise at midnight as a giant refreshed from his slumbers and cover the Heavens with gloom and darkness; have seen him awake the tempest; let loose the red lightnings that ran along the mountain tops for a thousand miles, swifter than the eagle's flight in heaven.  Then I have seen him stand up and dance like angels of light in the clouds to the music of that grand organ of Nature, whose keys seem touched by the fingers of Divinity in the halls of Eternity, that responded in notes of thunder, that resounded through the universe.  Then I have seen the darkness drift away beyond the horizon and the morn get up from her saffron bed like a queen, put on the robes of light, come forth from her palace in the sun and stand tip toe on the misty mountain top, and night fled from before her glorious face to his bed chamber at the pole.  She lighted the green vale and the beautiful river, where I was born and played in childhood, with a smile of sunshine.  O! beautiful land of the mountains, with thy sun-painted Cliffs, how can I ever forget thee?"

Points of Interest

There are many beautiful drives in and around the City on the many pikes and roads leading in every direction.  Points of special interest are the University of Tennessee grounds, the grounds of the State Deaf and Dumb School; the U. S. Post office; Fort Saunders [Sanders]; Lake Ottossee; Fountain City; Gray Cemetery; the Federal Cemetery, containing over three thousand soldiers; the Confederate Cemetery. with its new monument built entirely of Tennessee White Marble; the hills and bluffs south of the river; Lyon's View, one of the finest river views in the South; and the famous "Island Home" farm of Col. Perez Dickinson.

Climate

An ideal country must be not only rich in resources, but its climate must be free from malarial influences and from the extremes of heat and cold.  It is true that for gain thousands endure these extremes, or risk health and life even in malarial districts, but these are not conditions of the country that we picture to ourselves as the best in the world.

The influences of climate are not limited to the matter of health entirely, but bear with equal force upon the products of the soil and the consequent cost of living.

Considered in every particular and for all purposes, there is no climate in the world that surpasses that of Knoxville and the Great Valley of East Tennessee.  Few countries can boast its equal.  It is not only free from malarial influences, but there are no exhausting extremes of heat and cold.  There are two principal reasons for this happy condition -- one is the latitude, the other is the altitude, coupled with the most perfect natural drainage.

The latitude of Knoxville is the same as that of countries that were the cradle of the human race, countries that have figured prominently in all history, both sacred and profane.

A line drawn through Knoxville and around the globe would pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, where Europe and Africa join hands; through the center of the Mediterranean Sea, touching its largest islands; then through Northern Syria, near the ancient city of Antioch; next, through the older lands of Bible history, passing the site of ancient Nineveh; then through Persia by its capital city, Teheran, and in sight of the Caspian Sea; next, through Thibet, then the tea-growing districts of Northern China; then, through Central Corea and Central Japan, it reaches the United States again near the center of California.

Knoxville's isothermal, or line of equal temperature, passes around the world a little north of the line of latitude, that is, through Central Spain, Northern Italy and the North Mediterranean Sea.

The growing season of this section is about 194 days; the days of killing frosts, and the days free from frosts, 179.  Two systems of winds prevail here, one from the Northwest and the other from the Gulf, the latter bringing with it warmth and moisture.  The mountains upon either side and the hills in the Valley break the force of these winds, so that cyclones, the destroying angels of the West, fire unknown here.  The topography of the country around Knoxville is such that the temperature
at one point differs very materially from that at another point a few miles distant.  A thousand feet of altitude is equal to 180 miles upon the surface of the earth northward or to a change of three degrees in temperature.  Twenty-five miles east of Knoxville, on the mountains, one may enjoy the climate of Canada during our hottest weather, and that, too, without the trying extremes of the latter country.

Upon the surface of the Valley may be found the same vegetation that grows in Mississippi, while upon the great mountains upon the East, cranberries grow wild, and much of the flora of Canada flourishes to perfection.

The hottest weather ever recorded in Knoxville, 100° in the shade, has occurred only three times in twenty-one years.  The coldest temperature ever experienced, 16° below zero, was in the terrible winter of 1883-4, when there was so much loss of life in other parts of the United States.  But, as in the case of the highest temperature it lasted only a few hours.  The usual coldest weather is about five degrees above zero.

Mr. Henry Pennywitt, Observer U. S. Weather Bureau, furnishes the following as the records of his office in this city.  The figures quoted cover a period of twenty-one years:

The mean temperatures for each of the months during this period was:

The coldest month is January; the hottest is July.  The amount of rainfall for the same period has been:

The monthly rainfall during this period was in inches and fractions of an inch:

The greatest amount of rainfall is during the Winter season, the least during the Fall.

Such is the purity of the atmosphere around Knoxville that violent epidemics, like cholera and yellow fever, never gain a foothold here.  During epidemic seasons, when these fatal diseases wrought havoc in other places to the north, south east and west, Knoxville has received refugees without harm to herself.

The text and HTML code of this page is copyright ©2003 to Billie R. McNamara.  All rights reserved.  Please direct all questions and comments to Ms. McNamara.  Background graphic image was borrowed from Fred Smoot. Used by permission.

This page was last updated December 11, 2003.
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