Mixing Fact and Fiction in Northeast Tennessee

Near the community of Trade, population about 40, a beautiful antebellum white mansion sprawls across the top of a small knoll in the midst of rolling green hill. David O. Selznick could have used it for Tara in “Gone With the Wind.” A local citizen caught our astonished looks and laughed.

“Pretty nice spread for us hillbillies, isn’t it?” she asked.

Old myths and stereotypes die hard. People still envision poverty-stricken, bare-foot farmers smoking corn-cob pipes when they talk about this corner of southern Appalachia in northeastern Tennessee.

The citizens of this historic mountain country take it all in stride. And while they’re a tolerant lot who even make fun of that hardscrabble farmer image, they’re also loyal Tennesseans who are fiercely proud of their heritage.

This is the land of America’s first frontier, where westward migration began in the 18th Century. Daniel Boone set off from here with his 30 ax-men to cut the Wilderness Trail into Kentucky.

The first constitution ever written by Americans was drafted here. The first territorial capitol was established here. Davy Crockett was born here.

America’s seventh President, Andrew Jackson, practiced law in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

Nowadays, Jonesborough has gained notoriety as the home of the National Storytelling Festival, held for three days during the first full weekend in October.

The festival began in 1973, the creation of Jonesborough’s former mayor, Jimmy Neil Smith, who invited five storytellers to tell tales from the back of a hay wagon to about 60 listeners. Today, storytellers come from around the world. This year, more than 6,000 people are expected to hear them when the festival is held Oct. 5-7.

Jonesborough is the first town in the United States to be entered on the National Register as a designated historic district. Chartered in 1779 (before there was even a Tennessee), Jonesborough has survived Cherokee Indian attacks, the Revolution and the Civil War.

Much of the town looks as it did a century ago, with handsomely restored old buildings, cluttered antique shops and churches dating back to the 1840s.

Andrew Jackson lived here when he was a young lawyer, boarding in a log cabin that has been restored and relocated on Main Street, which was once the Great Stage Road between Nashville and Washington, D.C.

Jackson was threatened with a tar-and-feathering in his younger days, just down the block at the Chester Inn, which dates to 1797. Later, he returned and hosted a great reception there during his presidency.

The inn is undergoing restoration, and is soon to be the official home and museum of the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling (NAPPS).

Every small town in this historic corner of Tennessee, or at least some part of it, seems to be either a National Historic Landmark or on the National Register of Historic Places. The townspeople live in houses listed in the National Register. Their homes are featured in national magazines, their furniture so exquisite they are asked to loan it to museums for display. So much for that hillbilly image.

Millions of visitors pass by this area every year on their way to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 80 miles south. They miss a lot.

A short detour off Interstate 81 takes visitors along winding scenic country roads, past lakes, rivers, state parks or into the Cherokee National Forest to the east. Historic cities and towns, crammed with things to see and do, skirt both sides of the busy highway.

In 1965, potter Nancy Patterson Lamb, who trained in Los Angeles and perfected her craft at Finland’s Arabia pottery works and Denmark’s Royal Copenhagen, founded Iron Mountain Stoneware in the hamlet of Laurel Bloomery, near the junction of the Virginia and North Carolina borders. The transplanted Californian has been there ever since, selling her products across the country--to places such as Tiffany’s in New York and Gump’s in San Francisco.

Just up the road from Jonesborough, off Highway 321, more history-making events took place at Sycamore Shoals in Elizabethton, site of the first permanent settlement outside the original 13 colonies.

The first constitution ever written by Americans (even before the Declaration of Independence) was drafted there, and the largest land purchase in our nation’s history, the Transylvania Purchase, took place at Ft. Watauga, when Richard Henderson bought 20 million acres from the Cherokee Indians for a paltry 10,000.

The reconstructed fort stands near the Watauga River, part of the Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area. Other worthwhile visits in Elizabethton are the 1780 Carter Mansion, one of the oldest houses remaining in Tennessee, and, for fans of covered bridges, the still-in-use, l34-foot wooden structure crossing the Doe River.

At Piney Flats, less then 10 miles away, a log house known as Rocky Mount served as the first territorial capitol in the United States when President Washington appointed William Blount as territorial governor in 1790.

Rocky Mount is now a living-history museum, where interpreters dressed in authentic costumes re-create life as it was when Mr. and Mrs. William Cobb, the original owners, lived there.

Visitors are greeted as if they are friends who have come to call for a Sunday visit, and Mrs. Cobb leads guests through her home and shows off her “purdy” furniture and “necessary chair” (commode), punctuating her gossip about the neighbors with frequent “mercy sakes” declarations.

When Daniel Boone set out to cross the Cumberland Gap in 1775, the area of Kingsport was still part of North Carolina. The city wasn’t established until 1802 when William King built a boat yard on the Holston River.

Exchange Place, a restored 19th-Century pioneer farm homestead in Kingsport, was another major stop where travelers exchanged horses and currency along the Great Stage Road. Today, visitors are treated to crafts demonstrations and tours of the eight buildings (six are original) on the grounds, including a blacksmith shop and smokehouse.

If historic houses and architecture are your passion, take a run south on Highway 11W to Rogersville, another small town on the Great Stage Road. Founded in 1789, Rogersville claims 35 sites on the National Register, from churches and mansions to a railroad depot.

It’s worth the trip just to stop in (for a meal or for the night) at the Hale Springs Inn, which has been serving travelers since it was built in 1824. You’ll find an 1889 guest book in the lobby, as well as the original wainscoting, chair rails, pine plank floors and Colonial furniture.

The streets of Greeneville, founded in 1783, are still lined with gracious antebellum homes. The town claims America’s l7th President, Andrew Johnson, as its most famous resident. The much-maligned Johnson (he was the only President to have articles of impeachment brought against him) came to Greeneville from North Carolina as a l7-year-old in 1826 and died there in 1875.

Just east of Greeneville, the 63-acre Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park, including a reproduction of the log cabin in which he was born, runs along the banks of the Nolichuckey River. (Crockett was not born on a mountaintop, contrary to what Walt Disney Studiosmay have depicted.)

If you feel a need to unwind after all this historic touring, one perfect spot would be Roan Mountain State Resort Park, with its lofty meadows, wildflowers, gardens, conifer forest and impressive views of the Blue Ridge Range.

There’s also a preserved homestead, settled in 1878, in the park on Strawberry Mountain. The caretaker, grandson of the original homesteader, will sit on the front porch with visitors and reminisce. It’s like being on Walton’s Mountain. Any moment you expect to hear Mary Beth or Erin call out “Night, John.”

If you’re really lucky, you might catch Jim Miller playing his hammered dulcimer on a balmy summer evening in the park. The music (“It’s bluegrass, not country; there’s a difference, you know,” says Miller) is so sweet it can bring tears to your eyes.

Hillbilly music, some people say.

Beautiful music.