Skip to content

Kingsport Spirit

Jeff Fleming's unique take on the Kingsport Spirit with stories of faith, family, people, places, & history of his hometown and surrounding region. Jeff retired in 2019 after serving the City of Kingsport for 35 years, rising from planning intern to city manager.

  • History
  • Move To Kingsport
  • People
  • Motivation
  • My Family
  • Everyday Heroes

    by Deborah Daugherty, Past President, Rotary Club of Kingsport A little background: the first conversations had about this art sculpture and who it would honor started almost five years ago, as four of us began making a strategic plan for how Rotary Club of Kingsport should celebrate their centennial year with the 100th celebration planned…

    Jeff Fleming

    July 24, 2025
    People
    art, books, heroes, rotary, sculpture, writing
  • Maybe Fun Fest Means a Little Bit More

    We all remember the Dr. Seuss book, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. The grouchy grinch lives on a neighboring mountain and each year when the citizens of Whoville come out to hold hands, sing songs, and celebrate Christmas, their joy plucked his last nerve. So, he decided to steal all the presents–to take away the…

    Jeff Fleming

    July 20, 2025
    Move To Kingsport, My Family, People
    Community, emotion, family, fun, humanity, reunion, smiles, tourism, travel
  • Cousins

    Rarely do you get this opportunity—a reunion of two cousins, now men, born three years apart, of sisters who were born three years apart. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly 50 years. My grandfather and uncle worked for Mead Paper in Kingsport. In 1946, Mead teamed up with Inland Container Corporation to form the…

    Jeff Fleming

    July 12, 2025
    My Family
    Boomers, cousins, family, fathers, grandfathers, life, love, maturity, memories, writing
  • Kingsport: Year-Long Growth Amid a Summer Slowdown

    Move to Kingsport’s rolling twelve-month metrics edged upward in June, signaling steady growth in inbound relocations. Arrivals ticked up to 641 families spanning 46 states (2.9 per workday), and median pricing rose to $345,600 ($165/SF). The previous period had 637 new families from 45 states—averaging 2.6 per workday—and a median home price of $343,078 ($161/SF).…

    Jeff Fleming

    July 2, 2025
    Move To Kingsport
    City Planning, economy, migration, tennessee
  • Kingsport, Bristol, and Sullivan County: East Tennessee’s Tightest Housing Market

    Realtor.com’s May 2025 supply-demand chart offers a revealing look at home values and market dynamics across 26 communities in the surrounding region. Amid a mix of balanced, buyer, and seller markets, two names jump out: Kingsport, Bristol, and Sullivan County. These areas share a unique—and telling—position in the current housing landscape: they are among the…

    Jeff Fleming

    June 22, 2025
    economy, Move To Kingsport
    economy, housing, housing-market, investing, market, north carolina, real esate, real estate, realtor, south carolina, tennessee, virginia
  • Great Mass Meeting of Tennesseans and Virginians at Kingsport

    FORTY THOUSAND PERSONS PRESENT—ENTHUSIASM OF THE DEMOCRACY—EAST TENNESSEE SAFE FOR POLK AND DALLAS I enjoy digging into old newspaper articles, and this snippet from the 1844 Nashville Union is a real treasure. We often assume Kingsport only began in 1917, but for 156 years before that it was a bustling river port—the highest navigable point…

    Jeff Fleming

    June 4, 2025
    History
    campaigns, elections, kentucky, nature, oregon, philosophy, poetry, politics, president, religion, tennessee, texas, travel
  • The First Steamboat at Kingsport

    Transcribed by AI from the 1847 Knoxville Register (14 years prior to the Civil War) “To the CASSANDRA, owned by the Messrs. Deerys & Churchwell, and commanded by Capt. Chapman, belongs the honor of having first succeeded in reaching Kingsport, the highest point on the Holston by many miles to which a steamboat has ever…

    Jeff Fleming

    June 4, 2025
    History
    commerce, History, kingsport, knoxville, riverboat, steamboat, tennessee, travel, writing
  • Kingsport’s Potential Noted…in 1876

    Today we think of Kingsport as the Model City incorporated in 1917. But there was a previous town incorporated in 1822 that we often overlook in history. It’s interesting to see newspaper articles published two generations before Northern industrialists arrived on the scene to build the city we know today. The time period was 1876–slightly…

    Jeff Fleming

    June 4, 2025
    History
    art, books, History, kingsport, photography, tennessee, travel, writing
  • 1902 – Centenarian’s View of Living in Kingsport Since 1822

    From the 1902 Knoxville Journal… History is typically read in textbooks, but this is a unique, personal point of view of someone who lived it. She lived in Kingsport before, during, and after the Civil War! Keep in mind when she says ‘downtown district’ that it doesn’t mean the one we know, it means the…

    Jeff Fleming

    June 4, 2025
    History
    History, kingsport, tennessee
  • Interest Growing in Kingsport

    From the 1908 Knoxville Journal…

    Jeff Fleming

    June 4, 2025
    History
    History, kingsport, tennessee
Previous Page
1 … 13 14 15 16 17 … 29
Next Page

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    Kingsport Spirit
    Join 186 other subscribers

    Have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.

  • Kingsport Spirit
    View site in Reader
    Manage subscriptionsSign upLog in
    Report this content
    Collapse this bar