City Of Knoxville

Many people who come to Knoxville arrive by plane and then head to Gatlinburg to see the Smoky Mountains. But Knoxville is a lot more than just a city near the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Knoxville is a hidden gem that has a lot of great things to see and do. And, as a bonus, none of them are so popular that they are crowded with tourists.

These are just a few things about Knoxville that you might not know

It’s a foodie’s paradise! You can find BBQ, fried chicken, and okra, as well as restaurants that have won awards, like The Barn at Blackberry Farm, which was a James Beard finalist.

It has a lot of colleges. Knoxville is orange and white because it is home to the main campus of the University of Tennessee. Around here, college football is a big deal. Also, the university makes Knoxville feel more like a big city because it has students from all over the world and a wide range of restaurants, bars, and shops to serve them.

At least some of the atomic bomb was made here. In the early 1940s, uranium for the first bomb was enriched at Oak Ridge Laboratories, which is just outside of Knoxville.

There was a World’s Fair there. Many people today think of the World’s Fair as something from the early 1900s. But they were still held in the U.S. not too long ago, and Knoxville was the site of one in 1982. At the fair, touch screens were shown for the first time.

Once, it was called the “Underwear Capital of the World.” The area was one of the best places to grow cotton in the world. Because of this, Knoxville’s textile mills used to make more underwear than almost anywhere else.

There are more breweries in the city than you could ever visit. In addition to the many well-known taprooms and beer markets, the Knoxville Ale Trail has 25 breweries.

It’s full of history. Before becoming the state capital in the 1790s, Knoxville was the capital of the Southwest Territory. That only lasted about fifteen years, but many historical buildings, museums, and monuments remind people how important it was to Tennessee’s early history.