For many years, only intrepid explorers and hardy lumbermen were drawn to the forbidding mountains visible on the horizon from Knoxville. Despite early efforts on the North Carolina side of the Smoky Mountains in 1899, things only really got moving after Willis and Annie Davis returned to Knoxville from an inspirational trip to see some of the grand national parks out west. Fired up by the idea that a national park could be developed in the Smokies, Willis helped foster the creation of the durable Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association. Annie herself even ran for public office to ensure that the state legislature played its part, working with the City of Knoxville, and officials in North Carolina to acquire key properties.

The road to success over the next 17 years proved far rockier than anyone envisioned, involving many ups and downs, legal battles, political shenanigans, fist fights, and ultimately the acquisition of more than 6,600 separate property parcels. The movement also led to the emotional eviction of mountain folk from their ancestral homes that caused bitterness for years. 

Ambitious fundraising campaigns attracted large corporate and individual gifts as well as nickels and dimes from hotel bell hops and school children, but it would take a $5 million matching gift from wealthy philanthropist David Rockefeller, Jr. to make the new national park a reality. 

After all was said and done, Great Smoky Mountains National Park was officially established in 1934 and dedicated in 1940. This is the story of how it all came to be.

Written by Paul James and read by Robin Wilhoit.

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project.

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project as well as donors from National Giving Day 2025, including: Gary Balltrip, Karen Callaway, Steve and Lisa Davis, David Headrick, Theresa Lee and Jacob Love, John and Katherine McCarty, John and Lillian Mashburn, Susan Davenport, Katharine Capito Torbett & Howard Capito, Anne Young, and Christopher Manning.

Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org

When checking the status of a flight or whether you are heading out of town or waiting on a family member or friend to arrive, it’s handy to know the three-digit code for the Knoxville airport. Those three letters—T Y S —stand for Tyson, or more specifically, McGhee Tyson, for whom the airport is named.

Even though it’s not even located in Knox County—and most people have no idea why the Knoxville airport has that unusual name. 

Its story weaves together the family history of the prominent Tyson family and their efforts to establish Tyson Park on Kingston Pike in memory of their son. It’s also linked to the history of Knoxville’s first airport, Aviation Field, in Bearden, and finally, in 1939, its successor, the airport that we know today as  McGhee Tyson airport.

Written by Paul James and Jack Neely and read by Jeremy Kourvelas.

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project.

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project as well as donors from National Giving Day 2025, including: Karen Callaway, Steve and Lisa Davis, David Headrick, John and Katherine McCarty, John and Lillian Mashburn, Susan Davenport, Katharine Capito Torbett & Howard Capito, Anne Young, and Christopher Manning.

Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org

These days, the annual Knoxville Christmas parade that rolls along Gay Street, typically on the first Friday of December, remains as popular as ever. But everything has to start somewhere, and we have to look back almost 100 years to see how it all began. 

Cities of Knoxville’s size had been clamoring to get on the Christmas parade bandwagon since watching the Macy’s Christmas Parade be wildly received in New York in 1924. Even though that first one was staged on Thanksgiving Day, that Christmas parade was renamed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1935.

Inspired by Macy’s wildly popular parades, the Knoxville Journal took steps to stage the very first Christmas parade here in 1928, preferring to call it the Knoxville Santa Claus Parade. More than 30 floats, dignitaries and high school bands gathered for assembly on Main Street before stepping off at Gay Street at noon. Resplendent in traditional crimson attire made from a reindeer hide trimmed in white fur, Santa was pulled along in his sleigh on wheels by a team of four reindeer.

The event was also touted as being the biggest crowd ever assembled on Gay Street, with one local merchant quipping, “It was the most colorful peacetime parade in Knoxville’s long history.”

Written and read by Paul James.

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project.

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project. Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org

The Knoxville area once known as the Bowery included hundreds of little shops: secondhand stores run by immigrants, some early African American barber shops and movie theaters, some of the city’s first Chinese laundries, some of the city’s last livery stables and blacksmiths, and drugstores that sold things that mainstream drugstores wouldn’t. It was also the epicenter of an underground economy, the herb men. 

To most people, one such herb man, known as Doc Mullins, was a complete mystery. His death certificate listed him, rather matter-of-factly, as a “Herb Doctor.” But by reputation, he was known as a conjurer. Thanks to curious News-Sentinel columnist Bert Vincent we know some of Doc’s strange story.

Written by Jack Neely. Read by Don Thress.  

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 
 
Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project.

Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org
   

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project. 

For anyone who has spent much time in Knoxville, there is one thing that you’ll encounter in almost every part of the city, and that’s Tennessee marble. It graces several impressive downtown buildings, and you can see where it was once extracted at several abandoned or reclaimed quarries, particularly at Ijams Nature Center, now part of the city’s expansive Urban Wilderness in South Knoxville.  While the nature center still retains the original acreage where the Ijams family originally developed their own farm into a semi-private bird sanctuary, across Island Home Avenue you’ll find two distinctly different reclaimed quarries amid an extraordinary landscape like nothing else anywhere.  This extended podcast episode looks back at the history of the marble industry in Knoxville, once called “Marble City,” and includes a reflective interview with Ben Nanny, Conservation Director, who has been directly involved in the reclamation of these quarries during his more than 20 years at Ijams.

Written by Paul James with Ben Nanny. Read by Alex Haralson. 

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 
 
Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org
   

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project. 

Walk along Walnut Avenue between Union Avenue and Summit Hill Drive today and you’ll find that it’s a relatively unremarkable spot. But it was once the home of one of the city’s respected couples, Peter and Henrietta Kern, who lived here in the late 1800s within spitting distance of the hustle and bustle of their retail emporium on the southwest corner of Market Square. The Girl’s High School would be built next door to the Kern’s, and later a string of retail shops, including George Loo’s hand Laundry and Greenlee’s Bicycle Shop thrived here during the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s.

Greenlee’s, particularly, became a cherished hangout for musicians like Chet Atkins, who would walk over from the WNOX studios on Gay Street. And Barnum & Bailey liked to post circus posters on Greenlee’s upstairs windows, for a time touting appearance by the legendary gorilla Gargantua and his mate Toto.

Written and narrated by Paul James. A version of this story was first published by InsideofKnoxville.com

Sound design and editing by Pete Carty. Theme song composed by Mike Stallings.

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 
 
Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project. 

There are ghost walks and then there is “ghost walking.” Ghost Walking the Streets of Knoxville takes a look at life on the city’s downtown streets in bygone times; how these streets and their buildings have changed throughout the decades, and how through old pictures and stories we can glimpse the echoes of people’s past lives and particular events.

In this episode, historian Paul James reads the first of his own Ghost Walking columns that he wrote for InsideofKnoxville.com, taking us through Knoxville’s iconic Market Square, a space specifically designed to attract people and commerce.

Established in 1853 by two entrepreneurs who hoped their property holdings would increase in value if they donated the middle part to the City of Knoxville to serve as a market space, this place has changed much over the years with its various market houses, city hall, fire hall, jail and numerous stores and saloons. Yet in some ways, since Farmer's Markets still happen here, its central function has hardly changed at all. 

The series is produced by Pete Carty.

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org
   

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project. 

This surprising story focuses on a Spanish-speaking police chief beginning in the 1850s during Knoxville’s murky antebellum era.  Christopher Columbus Carlos, a tailor-turned-policeman had a reputation as an especially tough cop—a Town Marshall even—who was so skilled with a long stick and a thrown brick that he never carried a gun.

A legend in his own time, stories of Marshall Carlos continued even when he was an old man in a rapidly growing city of tall buildings. Old folks would tell stories about him, just like they had about Robin Hood or William Tell. He himself liked to amuse the disbelieving with tales that he remembered Knoxville when everything north of Clinch Avenue was wild, and you could hunt foxes and possums in the wilds of what only later became Market Square.

After he died, one newspaper wrote that he “was one of the best known and most highly respected citizens of this city. His name will always be familiar in the annals of East Tennessee and Knoxville.” That hasn’t proven to be the case, but we respectfully remember his fascinating story here, preserved for future generations.

Join us on this extended episode written by Jack Neely and narrated by Don Thress. Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. 
  
Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org

Groundhog Day is a peculiar holiday. We don’t expect Groundhog Day dinners, Groundhog Day gifts, Groundhog Day songs. But still, there it is, every February 2nd. It’s almost like the 1993 film starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowall: it always seems the same. Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, and we always have six more weeks of winter. Repeat.

Numerous holidays seemed to pop up in the years just after the Civil War, especially between 1865 and 1880, including Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, and Halloween. Others like Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas became more popular and more extravagantly celebrated that they ever had been before. 

If you’ve lived in Knoxville for more than a couple of months, you likely already know that we’re well within Groundhog Country. But what is its history here?

Join us on this short episode of how Groundhog Day is grounded in the ancient Catholic holiday of Candlemas, held on the second of February, and how it developed here in the second half of the 19th century.

Written by Jack Neely and narrated by Josh Brandon. Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. 
  
Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org

Imagine October in Knoxville, and subtract Volmania, drives in the Smokies, and Halloween decorations, and what would you have? But on certain Octobers between 1884 and 1913, we had more creative and unpredictable fun than we ever have today. 

The four-day event involved “a parade representing 65 or so local industries, 50 horse-drawn floats, a regatta on the Tennessee River, horse racing at the southside river park and a jousting tournament involving dozens of local “knights” in medieval plumage The festival often ended with a “Coronation” at Staub’s Opera House. In later year, the Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains made extravagantly optimistic predictions about Knoxville’s future. 

The event also presented an early flowering of African American culture, including a Negro Building organized by remarkable local African Americans, and described as “a wonder to behold.” Exhibits included agricultural displays, a museum of historical curios, and artworks. The building later moved to Chilhowee Park where it served as a major part of the cultural expositions held between 1910 and 1913.

Written by Jack Neely and narrated by Alex Haralson. Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project. Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org
   

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project.