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Portland has discovered what Kingsport has known for 106 years
For the past three decades, I’ve been trying to explain why Kingsport is called “The Model City”. Many think it’s because of the city’s physical plan that was laid out on a drawing board in Cambridge, Massachusetts by pre-eminent city planner John Nolen. In reality, it’s because Kingsport was the first city in Tennessee–and one…
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Local Swimmer Holds 16 National Records
I had an opportunity to catch-up with my fellow city retiree, Dave Taylor, the other day. Generations of residents would recognize Dave as one of the iconic ‘faces’ of Bays Mountain Park. As we were talking, I asked what he’d been up to in retirement. He told me that he’s an avid swimmer these days…
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Antebellum Ridgefields?
I bet many people don’t associate the name “Ridgefields” with “antebellum”. It’s best known as the Olmsted-designed mid-century golf community. That’s right, Olmsted, the same firm that designed Central Park in NYC, Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and White House, and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, among…
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Time marches on
Some of my fondest memories of my parents were our annual beach trips. It was the only time they didn’t work. They would scrimp and save all year for that one week in Myrtle Beach. There were 12 years between my brother and I, so his daughters were more like my sisters. We doubled-up in…
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The little girl of Rotherwood Mansion
Virgelia “Jill” Ellis was a Kingsport treasure. I was blessed to be asked to deliver her eulogy in 2021. She freely shared her life stories of growing up in times that are hard for us to imagine and uncomfortable to discuss. A time of segregation and the struggle for civil rights. She was kind, optimistic,…
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Kingsport: Fiscally conservative since…forever
As a former city manager, I know the pressure to provide the highest possible service at the lowest possible cost. Each year staff and board members agonize to cut corners, stretch dollars, and provide value. If you’ve always lived here (like me), you may not realize just how relatively valuable that fiscal conservatism is to…
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What do Old Hickory, UVA-Wise, and I have in common?
I suppose if you go back far enough, we’re all cousins. But it never ceases to amaze me the nuggets I find on Ancestry.com. Each of us has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, and 32 great-great-great-grandparents, 64 great-great-great-great grandparents, and so on. William Roberson was my 4G grandfather. In 1821 he lived…
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Kingsport’s Covered Bridge.
In 1795 a portion of the Island Road was rerouted to pass through Blountville. The Great Road (Stage Road, Wagon Road) was actually a conglomerate of road systems and side trails, and not just one specific road. Blountville and Boat Yard (later Kingsport) became major stagecoach stops. The Great Road generally followed today’s Netherland Inn…
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Sullivan County, North Carolina
I took a trip down memory lane this weekend to my grandmother’s birthplace, McPheeter’s Bend, just across the Holston River from Church Hill in Hawkins County, Tennessee. We used to call it ‘the country’ when I was growing up, but it’s literally 10 minutes from Allandale Mansion on the western border of Kingsport. I saw…
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“Horse Creek Pike” & “Long Island Drive”
As the modern, model city of Kingsport evolved after 1917, old roads and geographic names were replaced with new ones. My friend Jill Riggs-Rich who lives on ancestral land off Sullivan Gardens Parkway (formerly Horse Creek Pike) shared that her “grandparents would leave Horse Creek in a wagon, travel down to where Riverfront Seafood is…
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Kingsport Spirit 