The Tennessee-Virginia Tri-Cities: Urbanization in Appalachia, 1900-1950

In 1900, the Appalachian region of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia began to change. The inhabitants were dependent on the resources of the rural land, but the arrival of railroads spawned industrialization. Over the next several decades, families moved down from the mountains into the valley of East Tennessee as workers took jobs in the developing urban centers. Country stores, two-lane roads, and cornfields would eventually give way to cities, multi-lane highways, and new housing. The Tri-Cities—Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol—were starting to form.

In this carefully documented book, Tom Lee uses archival material, newspapers, memoirs, and current scholarship in Appalachian studies to examine the economic changes that took place in the Tri-Cities region from 1900 to 1950. With modernization and urbanization, an urban-industrial strategy of economic development evolved. The entry of extractive industry into the mountains established the power of the urban elite to shape rural life. Local businessmen saw the route to financial strength in the recruitment of low-wage industry. Workers left struggling farms for factory jobs. This urban-rural relationship supported the Tri-Cities’ manufacturing economy and gave power to the area’s elite.

The New Deal and the Second World War broadened this relationship as federal funding sustained the economy. The advantages of urban centers after decades of development left rural communities on the verge of disappearance and dependent on the jobs, opportunities, and economic vision of the cities. By 1950, the power of Appalachia’s elite over the people of the region had extended beyond urban boundaries and brought about the conditions necessary for the creation of the metropolitan Tri-Cities area of today.

Readers will gain a better understanding of the complexity of modernization in Appalachia and the rural South from this engaging book.

Tom Lee earned a PhD in history from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is assistant professor of history at Hiwassee College in Madisonville, Tennessee.