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Johnson City
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Johnson City

Tennessee, United States
Also known as: Haynesville, Johnson’s Depot
Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
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Johnson City, city, Washington county, northeastern Tennessee, U.S. It lies in a valley in the southern Appalachian Mountains, about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Knoxville and just west of Elizabethton. The area was settled in the 1760s. Originally a part of North Carolina, it was included in the Watauga Association, a form of self-government organized in 1772, and a few years later it was part of the short-lived state of Franklin. Following the arrival of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad in the mid-1850s, the settlement grew up around the railroad depot and was called Johnson’s Depot for Henry Johnson, an early settler and postmaster and later the city’s first mayor. In 1859 it was renamed Haynesville for Landon C. Haynes, later a Confederate senator, but was renamed for Johnson in 1861.

The economy is based on agriculture (livestock, corn [maize], and tobacco), services (including health care, finance, and telemarketing), and manufacturing (including water heaters, electronics, heating equipment, and automotive parts). The James H. Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center (known as Mountain Home) includes a lake and a cemetery. East Tennessee State University (1911) is in the city. The northern portion of Cherokee National Forest is to the south and west. Near the city are Rocky Mount, a restored 18th-century territorial capital, and the Tipton-Haynes Historic Site, an 18th-century home that includes a museum and a cave. The Appalachian Regional Fair is held in August in nearby Gray. Inc. 1869. Pop. (2000) 55,469; Johnson City Metro Area, 181,607; (2010) 63,152; Johnson City Metro Area, 198,716.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kenneth Pletcher.
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Appalachian Mountains
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Blue Ridge, Appalachian Mountains Appalachian Mountains upland forest, Quebec White Mountains, New Hampshire Allegheny Mountains Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia Mount Katahdin, Maine Mount Washington, New Hampshire Tennessee River, Tennessee Shenandoah National Park, northern Virginia
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Blue Ridge, Appalachian Mountains
Blue Ridge, Appalachian Mountains Blue Ridge, part of the Appalachian Mountains.

Appalachian Mountains

mountains, North America
Also known as: Appalachians
Written by
Wilma Dykeman
Adjunct Professor of English, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. State Historian of Tennessee. Author of The French Broad; coauthor of The Appalachian Mountains and others.
Wilma Dykeman
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Appalachians
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Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian Mountains, great highland system of North America, the eastern counterpart of the Rocky Mountains. Extending for almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador to central Alabama in the United States, the Appalachian Mountains form a natural barrier between the eastern Coastal Plain and the vast Interior Lowlands of North America. As a result, they have played a vital role in the settlement and development of the entire continent. They combine a heritage of natural beauty and a distinctive regional culture with contemporary problems of economic deprivation and environmental deterioration.

Physical features

Physiography

upland forest, Quebec
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upland forest, QuebecUpland forest on the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec, Canada.
White Mountains, New Hampshire
2 of 4
White Mountains, New HampshireWhite Mountains, near Gorham, New Hampshire.
Allegheny Mountains
3 of 4
Allegheny MountainsAllegheny Mountains in autumn.
Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia
4 of 4
Blue Ridge Mountains, VirginiaBlue Ridge Mountains, northwestern Virginia.

The system may be divided into three large physiographic regions: northern, central, and southern Appalachia. These include such mountains as, in the northern area, the Shickshocks (French: Chic-Chocs) and the Notre Dame ranges in Quebec; the Long Range on the island of Newfoundland; the great monadnock (isolated hill of bedrock) of Mount Katahdin in Maine; the White Mountains of New Hampshire; and Vermont’s Green Mountains, which become the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and eastern New York. New York’s Catskill Mountains are in central Appalachia, as are the beginnings of the Blue Ridge range in southern Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains, which rise in southwestern New York and cover parts of western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and eastern Ohio before merging into the third, or southern, region. This area includes the Alleghenies of West Virginia and Virginia; the Blue Ridge range, extending across Virginia and western North Carolina, the northwestern tip of South Carolina, and the northeastern corner of Georgia; the Unaka Mountains in southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina (of which the Great Smoky Mountains are a part); and the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Kentucky, southwestern West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama.

Mount Katahdin, Maine
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Mount Katahdin, MaineSunrise at Mount Katahdin, Maine.
Mount Washington, New Hampshire
2 of 2
Mount Washington, New HampshireMount Washington as seen from the Saco River near Conway, New Hampshire.

The highest elevations in the Appalachians are in the northern division, with Maine’s Mount Katahdin (5,268 feet [1,606 metres]), New Hampshire’s Mount Washington (6,288 feet), and other pinnacles in the White Mountains rising above 5,000 feet (1,525 metres), and in the southern region, where peaks of the North Carolina Black Mountains and the Tennessee–North Carolina Great Smoky Mountains rise above 6,000 feet (1,825 metres) and the entire system reaches its highest summit, on Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet [2,037 metres]).

Tennessee River, Tennessee
Tennessee River, TennesseeThe Tennessee River as seen from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.

A distinctive feature of the system is the Great Appalachian Valley. It includes the St. Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Kittatinny, Cumberland, Shenandoah, and Tennessee valleys in the United States; the latter is the site of the world-famous Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a government agency for natural resource conservation, power production, and regional development.

Shenandoah National Park, northern Virginia
Shenandoah National Park, northern Virginia

In the area known geologically as “New” Appalachia, especially where there are softer limestone rocks that yield to the constant solution by water and weak acids, numerous caves are a distinctive feature of the physiography. The chief caverns lie within or border the Great Valley region of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. Caverns of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia provide well-known and dramatic examples of underground passages, rooms, watercourses, formations, and other cave features that honeycomb much of the land below central and southern Appalachia.

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