Web Design in Blountville, TN

About Blountville, Sullivan County

Blountville is the county seat of Sullivan County, Tennessee, and it holds that job without being an incorporated city or town, the only county seat in the state in that position. The 2020 census counted 3,120 people, up slightly from 3,074 in 2010, on 4.93 square miles of land with no water area, at an elevation of 1,539 feet on ZIP code 37617. Sitting between Kingsport, Johnson City and Bristol, it is the piece of the Tri-Cities that holds the courthouse, the regional airport and the community college.

History of Blountville

• The site is thought to have held a longhunter fort before permanent settlement. James Brigham bought a tract of about 600 acres here in 1782, and in 1792 he handed 30 acres to Sullivan County for a county seat and put up a hotel nearby. The town was laid off and made the seat in 1795. Its first courthouse and jail was a log structure, replaced in brick in 1825, and by 1830 the settlement counted 209 residents, two churches, six stores, two taverns, ten mechanics, one doctor and one lawyer. On the afternoon of September 22, 1863, Union cavalry and artillery under Colonel John W. Foster attacked Colonel James E. Carter's Confederates here during Ambrose Burnside's expedition into East Tennessee. The four hour Battle of Blountville shelled the town, gutted the courthouse by fire and forced the Confederates out. The courthouse was rebuilt inside its old walls in 1866, and the building standing today comes from a major 1920 construction with additions made in 1958.

Landmarks and Places in Blountville

• Several eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings form the Blountville historic district, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its centerpiece is the Deery Inn on Tennessee State Route 126, the former Main Street, a two story Federal style building of 19 rooms that began as a log structure in the 1780s or 1790s serving travelers on the Great Stage Road. William Deery, an Ulsterman, bought it in 1801 and added a general store, a tavern and upstairs hotel rooms, and by 1821 he was running a stagecoach line of eight coaches and 53 teams of horses plus a Knoxville to Chattanooga steamboat service. Guests recorded in its early years include Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, the Marquis de Lafayette during his 1824 to 1825 travels, and Louis Philippe of France. Gideon and Mary Elizabeth Cate leased it during the Civil War as Cates' Hotel, and the inn survived the battle that burned the courthouse. Virginia Byars Caldwell bought it in 1940, restored it toward its early nineteenth century appearance and moved old log buildings onto the back lot, among them a smokehouse, a spring house, an early law office and the offices of the King Ironworks. The Anderson Townhouse is the district's other eighteenth century survivor, and Appalachian Caverns and Boone Lake lie just south.

The Blountville Economy

• Blountville's role in the regional economy is institutional rather than industrial. Tri-Cities Regional Airport is located here, sited in Blountville precisely because the spot falls between Johnson City, Kingsport and the two Bristols. Northeast State Community College is also based in the community, and the Sullivan County courthouse keeps county government business on the same ground it has occupied since the 1790s.

Community Life in Blountville

• Motorsport arrived on June 1, 2013, when Muddy Creek Raceway hosted a round of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship, the first time that championship had run in the South in fifteen years. Schooling here carries an odd milestone. People from Blountville include the poet and editor Lannie Haynes Martin, who lived from 1874 to 1938, the nineteenth century priest and writer Samuel Audley Rhea, and Ron Ramsey, who served as the 49th lieutenant governor of Tennessee and no longer holds that office.

Local reference: en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org