This page is part of the TnKin Tennessee History and Genealogy Project. There is more to genealogy than names and numbers, we have to understand the time our ancestors lived.

Bringing the Railroad to East Tennessee

By Samuel Folmsby

Chip's note: Probably no single factor influenced the growth and development of Tennessee more than the railroad. In this article we will learn the first TRUE railraod in Tennessee. We will read about the first steamship in Knoxville, as well as early divisions between East and Middle Tennessee.

Under the date of July 4, 1831, there came from the press in the little East Tennessee town of Rogersville the first number of the Rail-Road Advocate,1 the first American newspaper to be published primarily in the interest of railroad construction. Established as a result of a meeting of citizens of Rogersville on June 21, and published by an "Association of Gentlemen" of that town, this little paper appeared every two weeks until June 14, 1832, and had as its object the stimulation of interest in what was then the novel idea of establishing direct rail communication between East Tennessee and the Atlantic seaboard. Although the fulfillment of the dreams of these early railroad enthusiasts was to be long delayed, the view they presented in the final issue of their paper proved in general to be a correct one:

Railroads are the only hope of East Tennessee. With them, she would be everything the patriot would desire;- without them, she will continue to be, what she is, and what she has been, a depressed and languishing region-too unpromising to invite capital or enterprise from abroad, or to retain that which may grow up in her own bosom. They are the only improvements at all suited to her condition. Since the construction of railroads was to play such an essential part in the economic development of East Tennessee, and since the inhabitants of this section were so early, so consistently, and so vitally interested in the development of this mode of communication, it is considered worth while to present in some detail their early efforts to obtain through the medium of railroad construction a release from the isolated position in which the restraining bonds of nature had confined them.

For a long time prior to 1831 the forward-looking inhabitants of this section had been engaged in the search for a more convenient access to the markets of the world. The Tennessee River, their only outlet, was a very unsatisfactory medium of transportation, not only because of the serious obstructions to navigation at the Muscle Shoals and elsewhere, but also because of the great distance along its tortuous course and the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. For the importation of groceries and manufactures it was for a long time of no use whatsoever, and until steamboats began to ascend the river to Knoxville, these commodities had to be brought overland at great expense on almost impassable roads either from the distant Atlantic cities of Philadelphia or Baltimore, or over the Cumberland Mountains from Nashville. Even as a means of exporting the 'surplus produce of the farms and forges of East Tennessee, the river could be used only at certain short periods of high water; and after having completed the long and hazardous voyage to New Orleans, these cargoes were farther from the European and Atlantic coast markets than when they had started.

One of the most popular proposals for remedying this unsatisfactory situation was the suggestion of a canal to connect the Hiwassee and Coosa rivers the close proximity of the headwaters of these two tributaries of the upper Tennessee and the Alabama, respectively, had very early called attention to this possibility of effecting a shortcut to the Gulf at Mobile, and the citizens of both East Tennessee and Alabama made numerous attempts to obtain the appropriation of funds necessary for its accomplishment. It is quite natural, therefore, that this canal project was the origin of what appears to have been the first suggestion of a railroad in East Tennessee. In 1827 a petition from citizens of this section was presented to the Tennessee legislature, asking for a charter for a railroad to connect the Hiwassee and Coosa rivers.

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This page is copyright 2000 Chip Brown. The original text was written by S.L Folmsby, with no copyright restrictions. This text is copyrighted in as much as we have added new work to the original text. Images and coding for these pages provided by Maynardville.Com. All the engines depicted in the title graphic are actual engines that ran in the state of Tennessee.