Geography and Industry

Eastern Tennessee is very rugged, with a lot of forests and many narrow river valleys. Central Tennessee is like central Kentucky to the north: it is open country that has lots of bluegrass in it. Western Tennessee is some of the richest farmland in the United States. Much of the cotton grown in the United States comes from the fields of western Tennessee.

The Tennessee River flows through the central part of the state, then down into Alabama, and back north into western Tennessee, up through Kentucky, and on into the Ohio River. The Tennessee River is one of the largest and most important rivers in the south.

There is so much to see and do in Tennessee. With the Mississippi River next door, and the Tennessee River itself winding through the state, boating, water-skiing, and fishing are all very popular, to say nothing of bass fishing, which many Tennes-seans take very seriously. And since Tennessee has more than twenty state parks, as well as parts of the Cherokee National Forest, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park within its borders, there are plenty of places in Tennessee to camp and hike as well.

Tennessee has many historic places worth visiting. These include President Andrew Jackson's plantation, The Hermitage. Shiloh National Military Park marks the site of the Civil War battle of Shiloh in the west, and the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park does the same for the Chattanooga battlefield in the southeastern part of the state.

Also, Tennessee is the home of Nashville, which is the country music capital of the world. If blues is more your thing, then Memphis, in the western part of Tennessee, might be a better place for you to visit, because Memphis is a hotbed of blues music!

History

Before the first Europeans visited Tennessee during the 1540s, tribes of Native American peoples like the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw lived in the area. Hundreds of years earlier, the region was dominated by the Mound Builder culture. These people constructed various styles and sizes of mounds for burial, ceremonial, and residential purposes. The mounds can be found all over Tennessee.

During the American Revolution, Tennessee was part of North Carolina (just like Kentucky to the north was a county in Virginia). East Tennessee was already settled by a number of Carolinians, including a heroic Revolutionary War leader named John Sevier.

Tennessee nearly split up during the Civil War. Eastern Tennessee was mountainous and not a good place to grow plantation crops such as tobacco and cotton. Like the people in the mountains of West Virginia, the people who lived in eastern Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains supported the Union during the war, and did not want to secede. The rest of Tennessee was plantation country, and supported slavery. Most of the people living there (aside from the slaves themselves, obviously!) wanted to secede.

It turned out to be a costly choice. Aside from Virginia, no state saw more fighting during the Civil War than Tennessee. Union troops in the western part of the state invaded the south by fighting their way along the main rivers in the state. Rivers were surrounded by valleys that made it easy for armies to move together.

Because of its position as a place from which to launch not one but two invasions of the south, getting and keeping control of Tennessee was very important to the Union during the Civil War. In fact, it was so important that in 1864, when President Lincoln was running for re-election, he took as his running mate a senator from Tennessee who had refused to give up his seat in Congress when his home state seceded.

TRY THIS!

Graceland

Have you ever heard your parents talking about the famous singer Elvis? Elvis's home is now a museum in Tennessee that's called Graceland. Make up a game with your friends about who can name the most Elvis songs. Or ask your parents to help you dig up some of their Elvis records and see if you can count how many times Elvis mentions Graceland in the lyrics.