Calendar of Events

Tuesday, January 10 at 6:00 p.m. at Maple Hall, 414 S. Gay Street

Our first in-person gathering of the year will be on the Second Tuesday, as always, at Maple Hall. Our subject will be our major focus of 2023: a book about South Knoxville. It's a daunting subject, this trans-riparian region that includes Island Home, several marble quarries, a once-famous lumber company, the old industrial-sized Kern's Bakery, Island Home, Vestal, Lindbergh Forest, Ijams' extraordinary and perhaps unique nature center, the Tennessee School for the Deaf, the eccentric hilltop enclave known as Loghaven as well as the architecturally daring midcentury-modern monument Little Switzerland, Knoxville's ca. 1920s auto manufacturer, and Chapman Highway, once the nation's primary route to America's most popular national park—yet none of all that was even considered part of Knoxville until 1917. The geographically distinctive section was once considered so remote it was jokingly called South America, and it's keeping some of its steep wildness in the Urban Wilderness network of bike and walking trails. We know a good deal about the backstory of this place that was the birthplace of a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist, the childhood home of America's first Black federal judge, and the last place that the Wild West outlaw Kid Curry was seen alive; we'll show pictures.

But our goal in 2023 is to learn much more. So, if you want to come and share your knowledge, documents, and photographs about South Knoxville, please join us. We hope to learn at least as much as you will.

Free program. Food and drinks available for purchase. Knoxville History Project: 865-300-4559, www.Knoxvillehistoryproject.org