The ville's of Tennessee

Knoxville and Nashville, that is!

We stayed at the Hotel St. Oliver, right next to Market Square in downtown Knoxville. It's a great place to stay to get a feel for the downtown. It's surrounded by places to eat, shop, and get a cup of coffee (we took advantage of all three). The first night we decided to see the movie Sherlock Holmes. It was closed captioned, which we were thankful for - considering the actors spoke very quickly and with British accents!


The next day was spent wandering around the downtown area. We happened upon funky statues...



braved the icy walkways along the Tennessee River, walked down Gay Street...



And saw some historic landmarks.


Some 1982 Knoxville, TN World's Fair Facts:

• This was the last successful World's Fair held in America
• The theme: Energy Turns The World
• Attendance: 11,127,786 visitors
• Knoxville was the smallest city to ever host an International Exposition
• The first touch-screen computer displays were demonstrated
• And the 75-foot Sunsphere was built specifically for the 1982 World's Fair. It has come to be a symbol for Knoxville - not to mention serve as a landmark for navigation. Except when you're on foot. It's kind of like the Space Needle in Seattle. You keep looking up expecting to find it, and it's always hiding behind some building. Then next thing you know - WHAM, there it is !

The Sunsphere

And just in case you didn't read enough facts, here are a few more facts about Knoxville (courtesy of the Knoxville tourism site):

• Settled in 1791, established in 1792, and incorporated in 1815.
• Named after Henry Knox, President Washington's War Secretary.
• Due to Knoxville being a major center of marble distribution in the early 1900s, its nickname soon become "The Marble City."
• Indians were the first settlers of Knoxville and East Tennessee. By the time the first European settlers appeared, the Cherokees dominated the region.
• James White was the first known settler of Knoxville.
• The first train arrived in Knoxville in 1855.
• The City of Knoxville shares its name with Knoxville, Georgia - Knoxville, Iowa - Knoxville, Maryland - Knoxville, Pennsylvania - and New Knoxville, Ohio.
• The soft drink Mountain Dew had its beginnings with Hartman Beverages in Knoxville in the late 1940's. That's a great fact for our favorite Missourians: Dolores and Virgil.
• In 1974 Walter Cronkite designated Knoxville as the "Streaking Capital of the World." It was in the spring of that year that an estimated 5,000 people on Cumberland Avenue took their clothes off... stripping on the "strip."
• It is illegal to lasso fish in Knoxville, TN.
• All businesses must have a "hitching post" in front of their buildings in Knoxville, TN.

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After a short 3-hour drive we found ourselves in the second great 'ville of Tennessee: Nashville. A quick note... There's also: Adamsville, Brownsville, Caryville, Centerville, Clarksville, Collierville, Cookeville, Cornersville, Crossville... and that's just through the C's!

We stayed at a KOA on the northern side of the city, nearly on the doorsteps of Opryland. One night we treated ourselves to dinner there - successfully navigating the halls and only getting lost once.

We spent a full day touring the capitol and the surrounding grounds.


The State Capitol of Tennessee was completed in 1859 and is one of the oldest original capitols in the U.S. that's still in active use. The architect, William Strickland, considered this building to be the crowning achievement of his career. So much so that he is buried in a tomb of his own design in the northeast corner. Guess he wanted to keep an eye on the place.

We thought it particularly interesting that the capitol is built of bigby limestone from a quarry only a few blocks away! Also, the interior marble was local - coming from around Rogersville and Knoxville. Unfortunately in the 1950s some of the exterior limestone had to be replaced with stone from Indiana. And in the 1980s several areas were restored to their original design - a common theme we've seen across the U.S.

The House of Representatives

Over many years of development, skyscrapers have blocked the view of the Capitol from all sides but the north, since that land was swampy and not good for large buildings to sit on. In order to commemorate Tennessee's 200th birthday, this bit of land was set aside to construct the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park - modeled after the idea of the Mall in Washington, D.C. The Mall consists of several small monuments, historical markers, fountains, and memorials.


On the west side of the Bicentennial Mall State Park is a 1400-foot long granite wall called the Wall of History. It lists quotes from famous Tennesseans and important events in the state's history such as:

• In 1848, "Volunteer" nickname became popular as a result of the more than 30,000 men who responded to a Mexican War troop call for 2,800.
• First self-service grocery store, Clarence Saunder's "Piggly Wiggly," opened in Memphis in 1916.
• "Moon Pies" originated at Chattanooga in 1918-1919.
• James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States, died in Nashville in 1849.
• Copper discovered in 1849 in Ducktown Basin in the southeastern corner of the state.

At the northern extreme of the mall lies a 95-bell carillon (basically a large collection of bells designed to be played together to create a melody). The carillon echoes Tennessee's musical heritage and represents the people of Tennessee having one bell per county. A melody is played each hour, and an answer comes from the 96th bell located on the grounds of the Capitol, thus representing government's answer to the people. Am I the only one that finds it ironic that a single bell can only give one answer? GONNGG!

The 95-bell carillon

The 96th bell often referred to as the "answer bell"

Remnants of the original Capitol columns in honor of the
late 1980s renovation architect, Charles Warterfield.

After visiting the Capitol we headed over to the Tennessee State Museum just one block south. It had 60,000 square feet of exhibits, split over three levels, with everything you could imagine from Paleolithic artifacts, to really old furniture, to Antebellum paintings. There was even a 3,500 year-old Egyptian mummy that was brought to Tennessee in 1859.


We had to leave our bags with an attendant while in the museum. On our way out, while retrieving our bags, we chatted with the attendant for a few minutes. After he found out we were from Louisiana, he went on to talk about how much he admired Jimmy Swaggart and how he wanted to go to Swaggart's school in Baton Rouge. He asked us what we thought of him - we bit our tongues and said we didn't know him personally... We didn't feel it was appropriate to share our favorite quote from Jimmy. After being caught with a prostitute for the second time, he told his congregation, "The Lord told me it's flat none of your business." So there.

We spent an evening at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, where after enjoying the buffet we ordered dessert and sat back to watch a play entitled Rumors. Directed by Bobby Wyckoff, it has an updated script after being shown on Broadway in the 1990s. It was hi-lar-ious. Oh, and the funny story about this visit... When we arrived in Huntsville, Alabama, to visit Grandad and Doris, we found out that they had driven to Nashville to see the exact same show just the day before! It was fun to share the memories with them.

Our final evening in Nashville was spent at the 28th Annual Colgate Country Showdown, hosted by Leann Rimes.

The Showdown was held in the historic Ryman Auditorium established in 1892. The auditorium has been put to many uses, but possibly the most notable is when it served as the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. A cool bit of trivia is that a five foot circle of the original Ryman stage was removed and inlaid into the stage floor in the newly built Opry House theater, where it's located just behind the lead singer's microphone. Do'h - so that's where the singers kept falling!

It was neat to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on to film a competition like this. Before the show even started, they did several takes of the audience hooping and hollering. Then we did a short calm applause. Then a longer calm applause. Then a chuckle. Then a longer chuckle. It was all quite silly. I was waiting for them to ask us to all sneeze at the same time.