Downtown Knoxville

Founded on a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River in 1791, Knoxville was a frontier town as well as the birthplace and first capital of Tennessee. From the postcolonial years through the Civil War and on to Knoxville’s emergence as an industrial, dynamic, and thoroughly American city, downtown was where everything happened—the setting of the city’s most memorable stories and legends. Spanning First and Second Creeks and connecting the river to the railroad, downtown is where Knoxvillians h...