8 Ways East, Middle and West Tennessee Feel Like Three Different States
Driving across Tennessee can feel like crossing more than one border.
Each end of the state has its own history, habits and hometown pride, and many Tennesseans are quick to point out the differences.
Here’s how East, Middle and West Tennessee set themselves apart.
1. 1861 Secession Vote
East Tennessee voted the opposite way from the state as a whole on secession in June 1861.
Statewide, about 105,000 voters chose secession and 47,000 chose to stay, according to the Tennessee Encyclopedia.
East Tennesseans voted more than two to one, 33,000 to 14,000, to stay with the Union.
Delegates from several East Tennessee counties met in Greeneville and drew up a petition asking the legislature to let East Tennessee form a separate state.
East Tennesseans owned far fewer enslaved workers than their Middle and West Tennessee counterparts.
If you’re looking for a literal case of wanting a different state, that petition is it.
2. Speech Patterns
The way people talk in East Tennessee falls in the Upper South, and the Tennessee Encyclopedia says it’s closer to the speech of western North Carolina and north Georgia.
It also uses traditional vocabulary that’s more widespread in the east, like “airish” for chilly and “fireboard” for a mantelpiece.
West Tennessee has cultural and linguistic ties to Mississippi and the Lower South.
One linguistic survey sees the Nashville Basin as a transition area between the two, while another groups it with West Tennessee.
If you call a paper bag a “poke,” you’re using a word linguists found more widespread in East Tennessee.
3. Elevation Gap
Clingmans Dome puts East Tennessee at more than 6,600 feet above sea level.
Parts of the Mississippi River flood plain in West Tennessee sit below 200 feet.
From the Smokies’ peaks to the Mississippi River flood plain, the land falls more than a mile.
Middle Tennessee’s Nashville Basin sits low, completely surrounded by the higher ground of the Highland Rim.
West Tennessee also has a lake that earthquakes made.
Reelfoot Lake in Lake and Obion counties formed during the New Madrid fault zone earthquakes of 1811-1812, according to the state’s natural areas program.
4. Music Origins
Bristol, in East Tennessee, hosted the sessions where producer Ralph Peer recorded the Carter Family, Ernest Stoneman and Jimmie Rodgers in July and August 1927.
Congress passed a resolution in 1998 recognizing Bristol as the birthplace of country music.
In Middle Tennessee, a radio show helped make Nashville a recording center.
A Nashville insurance company, National Life and Accident, launched a radio station in 1925.
In 1927 the station’s barn dance was renamed the Grand Ole Opry.
The Opry is the longest-running radio show in U.S. history.
In West Tennessee, Beale Street became the cultural center for Memphis’s Black community, and the Tennessee Encyclopedia says the blues was born on its stretch between Main and Lauderdale Streets.
Elvis Presley’s Sun Records sessions began at Sam Phillips’s Memphis studio in July 1954.
5. Two Time Zones
Almost all of East Tennessee runs on Eastern time, while Middle and West Tennessee run on Central time.
Clocks read Eastern time in Knoxville and Chattanooga and Central time in Nashville and Memphis.
Two zones, not three.
The line doesn’t match the Grand Division border, either.
State law puts Bledsoe, Cumberland and Marion counties in East Tennessee.
The time zone line runs along the western edges of Morgan, Rhea and Hamilton counties, among others.
Bledsoe, Cumberland and Marion sit just west of that line, so they fall on the Central side.
On I-40 in Cumberland County, you’ll pass a road sign that marks the change.
Where the Time Zone Line Lands
The Eastern and Central time boundary comes with a tiebreaker for any town the line runs through.
The same federal regulation puts every municipality located on the boundary line in the Central zone.
A town on the line doesn’t split the difference, so it takes Central time.
6. Settlement Dates
Settlers in East Tennessee organized the Watauga Association in 1772, which the Tennessee Encyclopedia describes as the first white government in Tennessee.
In Middle Tennessee, James Robertson arrived with settlers at what became Nashville on Christmas Day 1779, and Colonel John Donelson’s party came by boat on April 24, 1780.
West Tennessee was the last part of the state settled by Europeans, according to the Tennessee Historical Society, following a series of Chickasaw cessions in 1818.
Andrew Jackson, James Winchester and John Overton founded Memphis in 1819, 47 years after the Watauga Association.
7. Cotton Country
West Tennessee sits in the Mississippi River basin, and its rich soil led to large-scale cotton farming before the Civil War.
The Tennessee Historical Society says West Tennessee remains agriculturally significant today.
Tennessee planted 265,000 acres of cotton in 2023, and the five leading counties made up 56% of that.
Those counties are Haywood, Crockett, Lauderdale, Fayette and Gibson, and all five are in West Tennessee.
A University of Tennessee specialist says the state’s most productive cotton region stretches from the Mississippi River to I-24, across West and Middle Tennessee.
Haywood County alone planted more than 56,000 acres.
Using an 85-cent price, the Tennessee Lookout puts the sale of the state’s 2023 cotton at $278 million.
8. Home Teams
Many sports fans in East, Middle and West Tennessee cheer for different teams.
University of Tennessee football plays in Knoxville at Neyland Stadium, which seats 101,915, according to the university’s athletics department.
Nashville has the National Football League’s Titans and the National Hockey League’s Predators.
Memphis has the National Basketball Association’s Grizzlies, who began play at the Memphis Pyramid in the 2001-02 season.
The Titans’ franchise, then the Tennessee Oilers, played its 1997 season in Memphis, where attendance was low.
Attendance improved after the team moved to Nashville in 1998.
Psst! How much do you know about the Grand Divisions? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Which Division Is It?
Match Tennessee landmarks to their Grand Divisions. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Dayton hosted the Scopes trial, which opened in July 1925. Which Grand Division is Dayton in?
Where the Lines Come From
The Grand Divisions are written into state law, which names the eastern, middle and western divisions.
Each division gets a county list in the code, and the lists aren't equal.
The eastern division has 33 counties, the middle division has 41 counties, and the western division has 21 counties.
Middle Tennessee is the largest division, with about 41 percent of the state's land, according to the Tennessee Historical Society.
Lee Roy Reeves of Johnson City designed the state flag in 1905, and its three stars stand for the three Grand Divisions.
The stars sit off center on purpose, so that no division is superior to another.
The earliest mention of the divisions in state law comes in the 1835-36 Acts of Tennessee.
That act had the Supreme Court hold one session a year in each division.
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