Kingsport Spirit

Today, we tend to skip the first 156 years and focus on Kingsport as the 1917 Model City with landmarks like Church Circle, Broad Street, and the Train Station.

But early developers only repurposed the name of a previously incorporated town, an actual port on the river that had lost its charter after the Civil War.

What happened to old King’s Port?

Many years ago, in city planning school, I learned an obvious truth: cities exist for a reason–they’re centers of commerce located on a harbor, a river, a crossroads, a railroad, or in later years, an airport. The more types of transportation modes that converge elevate the place’s importance.

Transportation routes are the blood supply. If they are cut off or become irrelevant, the city no longer has a purpose and dies or declines.

The lands comprising King’s Port were settled In 1761, 15 years before the United States existed. The British built Fort Robinson to support Fort Loudon further downstream. During the American Revolution, Fort Robinson became Fort Patrick Henry. Settlers from Virginia and Pennsylvania flowed into the area following early paths/trails like the Island Road (so named because it led to Long Island). Think of it as the earliest version of today’s I-81 or U.S. 11W.

Kingsport (incorporated 1822)—known in the antebellum era as King’s Port or the Boat Yard—served as the commercial gateway for the fertile Holston River Valley, the largest farming region in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. The scale of agriculture is reflected in the 1860 enslaved population: 3,078 in Washington County, VA (including Glade Spring, Abingdon, and Bristol) and 2,930 downstream in Sullivan and Hawkins counties, TN (centered on Kingsport, Church Hill, and Rogersville). In contrast, Washington County, TN (Jonesborough) had 952, and Greene County recorded 767. For perspective, Johnson City did not yet exist—it emerged only after the Civil War.

With the people in Kingsport focused on river traffic, landlocked cities like Greeneville, Jonesborough, Johnson City, and Bristol focused on railroads. The first railroads were finished in the late 1850s just prior to the Civil War.

After the War, Kingsport—and the plantations that once surrounded it—were, as the saying goes, “gone with the wind.” The antebellum town surrendered its charter in 1879, and for nearly forty years the name Kingsport disappeared from official maps. That changed in 1917, when northern industrialists arrived with big plans and reincorporated the area as the Model City.

Here’s the twist: the lands that made up Old Kingsport weren’t actually annexed into the new city until 1963. In the meantime, other small communities with their own post office names—like Peltier and Horace—were gradually surrounded, absorbed, and replaced as New Kingsport expanded.

Peltier and Horace

In the early days of the post office, there were no rural routes and few rules. This led to many small post offices scattered throughout the countryside because travel was more treacherous in those days. It took an hour and a half to get from Kingsport to Bristol, so you can understand the need for convenience.

Peltier stood about 1.8 miles upstream on Reedy Creek at a key crossroads where several historic roads converged: Reedy Creek Road (today’s Bloomingdale Pike), the Great Stage Road (Netherland Inn Road), the Island Road (Sullivan/Watauga Streets), and the Moccasin Gap Road (Donelson Drive). In the 19th century, this junction made Peltier an important waypoint for travel and trade. The post office was established in 1885 and discontinued in 1889. Today, the site lies just downhill from Andrew Jackson Elementary School.

Horace, another small community, was located about 1.3 miles farther up Reedy Creek, near Gibson’s Mill. Its post office opened in 1892 and closed in 1903.

Yet another post office, Eden’s Ridge, sat roughly 3.6 miles from Peltier and 5 miles from Old Kingsport—a considerable distance in the era of horse-drawn travel. It was established in 1884 and discontinued in 1900. While Peltier and Horace have faded from living memory, Eden’s Ridge remains a recognizable name in Kingsport today.

If you look closely, you can still trace how the older road patterns of Peltier and Horace were absorbed into the new city’s master plan. In those sections, the street layout feels more organic—less in step with the measured rhythm of the Model City grid.

Either of those earlier place names could have been chosen for the new city in 1917. Personally, I’m glad they settled on Kingsport—a name that perfectly ties the community’s historic riverport past to its ambitious, planned future.