Qualla: Kingsport, Tennessee

Kingsport, Tennessee: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1916, an urban planner named John Nolen sat down and designed an entire American city. He worked from a blank slate and the conviction that an industrial town did not have to be ugly. The result was Kingsport, Tennessee, laid out with broad parkways and zoned neighborhoods and an Eastman Chemical Company plant at its economic heart. Most American cities accumulate. Kingsport was deliberate. More than a century later it is still defined by that founding logic: a place that was thought through before it was built, then built around chemistry and the long memory of the Holston River.

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Kingsport, Tennessee: Eastman and the Planned City

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the Tennessee Eastman Corporation opened its first chemical plant in Kingsport in 1920, the city was four years old. The plant grew. Eastman became one of the largest chemical companies in the world, and its headquarters never left town. Today the Kingsport plant complex is ...

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Kingsport, Tennessee: Daniel Boone Started Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before John Nolen drew his street grid, the Long Island of the Holston was sacred ground for the Cherokee. In 1761 the British built Fort Robinson on it, after Fort Loudoun fell to the south. In 1773, Daniel Boone arrived with his family and stayed for two years in a log cab...

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Kingsport, Tennessee: Inventions and Festivals

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kingsport claims two enduring American inventions. Harry Coover, an Eastman chemist, discovered the practical application of Super Glue here in 1951 while re-examining cyanoacrylate compounds first stumbled upon during wartime gun-sight research. And the Long Island iced tea, the...

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Kingsport, Tennessee: Douglass High and Rosenwald

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before integration, Douglass High School in Kingsport was one of the largest Black high schools in the region. Its original building, completed in 1929 on East Walnut Avenue, was a Rosenwald School, built with a combination of city funds, private donations, and money from the Ros...

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