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East Tennessee

East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 counties, 30 located within the Eastern Time Zone and three counties in the Central Time Zone, namely Bledsoe, Cumberland, and Marion. East Tennessee is entirely located within the Appalachian Mountains, although the landforms range from densely forested 6000 ft mountains to broad river valleys. The region contains the major cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee's third and fourth largest cities, respectively, and the Tri-Cities, the state's sixth largest population center.

During the American Civil War, many East Tennesseans remained loyal to the Union even as the state seceded and joined the Confederacy. Early in the war, Unionist delegates unsuccessfully attempted to split East Tennessee into a separate state that would remain as part of the Union. After the war, a number of industrial operations were established in cities in the region. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), created by Congress during the Great Depression in the 1930s, spurred economic development and helped to modernize the region's economy and society. The TVA would become the nation's largest public utility provider. Today, the TVA's administrative operations are headquartered in Knoxville, and its power operations are based in Chattanooga. Oak Ridge was the site of the world's first successful uranium enrichment operations, which were used to construct the world's first atomic bombs, two of which were dropped on Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. The Appalachian Regional Commission further transformed the region in the late 20th century.

East Tennessee is both geographically and culturally part of Appalachia. East Tennessee is home to the nation's most visited national park—the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—and hundreds of smaller recreational areas. East Tennessee is often considered the birthplace of country music, stemming from the 1927 Victor recording sessions in Bristol, and throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has produced a steady stream of musicians of national and international fame.

Geography
Unlike the geographic designations of regions of most U.S. states, the term East Tennessee has legal as well as socioeconomic and cultural meaning. Along with Middle Tennessee and West Tennessee, it comprises one of the state's three Grand Divisions, whose boundaries are defined by state law. With a total land area of 13558.27 mi2, comprises 32.90% of the state's land area and is the second-largest of the Grand Divisions, behind Middle Tennessee. The entirety of East Tennessee is both geographically and culturally part of Appalachia and the Appalachian Mountains and is usually considered part of the Upland South. East Tennessee borders North Carolina to the east, Virginia to the northeast, Kentucky to the north, Georgia to the south, and Alabama in the extreme southwest corner.

According to custom, the boundary between East and Middle Tennessee roughly follows the dividing line between Eastern and Central Time Zone. Exceptions to this rule are that Bledsoe, Cumberland, and Marion Counties are legally defined as part of East Tennessee, despite being within the Central Time Zone. Sequatchie County, located between Marion and Bledsoe Counties, is legally part of Middle Tennessee but is often considered part of East Tennessee. Sequatchie County has also been defined as part of East Tennessee in the past, and Marion County has been included in Middle Tennessee. Some of the northeastern counties of Middle Tennessee that supported the Union during the American Civil War, including Fentress and Pickett, are sometimes culturally considered part of East Tennessee. Fentress County in particular has been widely viewed by many as East Tennessee because it is located on the western edge of the Knoxville television market as opposed to Pickett County which is in the northeastern tip of Nashville television market.

Topography
East Tennessee is located within three major geological divisions of the Appalachian Mountains: the Blue Ridge Mountains on the border with North Carolina in the east; the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians (usually called the "Great Appalachian Valley" or "Tennessee Valley") in the center; and the Cumberland Plateau in the west, part of which is in Middle Tennessee. The southern tip of the Cumberland Mountains also extends into the region between the Cumberland Plateau and Ridge-and-Valley regions. Both the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains are part of the larger Appalachian Plateau.

The Blue Ridge section comprises the western section of the Blue Ridge Province, the crests of which form most of the Tennessee-North Carolina border. At an average elevation of 5000 ft above sea level, this physiographic province contains the highest elevations in the state. The Blue Ridge region is subdivided into several subranges—the Iron Mountains, Unaka Range, and Bald Mountains in the north; the Great Smoky Mountains in the center; and the Unicoi Mountains, Little Frog Mountain, and Big Frog Mountain areas in the south. Clingmans Dome, at 6643 ft, is the state's highest point and is located in the Great Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Most of the Blue Ridge section is heavily forested and protected by various state and federal entities, the largest of which include the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Cherokee National Forest. The Appalachian Trail enters Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains and roughly follows the border with North Carolina most of the distance to near the Roan Mountain, where it shifts entirely into Tennessee.

The Ridge-and-Valley division is East Tennessee's largest, lowest lying, and most populous section. It consists of a series of alternating and paralleling elongate ridges with broad river valleys in between, roughly oriented northeast-to-southwest. This section's most notable feature, the Tennessee River, forms at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers in Knoxville and flows southwestward to Chattanooga. The lowest point in East Tennessee, at an elevation of approximately 600 ft, is found where the Tennessee River enters Alabama in Marion County. Other notable rivers in the upper Tennessee watershed include the Clinch, Nolichucky, Watauga, Emory, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee, Sequatchie, and Ocoee rivers. Notable "ridges" in the Ridge-and-Valley range, which exceed elevations much greater than most surrounding ridges and are commonly referred to as mountains, include Clinch Mountain, Bays Mountain, and Powell Mountain.

The Cumberland Plateau rises nearly 1000 ft above the Appalachian Valley, stretching from the Kentucky border in the north to the Georgia and Alabama borders in the south. It has an average elevation of 2000 ft and consists mostly of flat-topped tablelands, although the northern section is slightly more rugged. The plateau has many waterfalls and stream valleys separated by steep gorges. The "Tennessee Divide" runs along the western part of the plateau, separating the watersheds of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Plateau counties mostly east of this divide—i.e. Cumberland, Morgan, and Scott—are grouped with East Tennessee, whereas plateau counties west of this divide, such as Fentress, Van Buren, and Grundy, are considered part of Middle Tennessee. Most of the Sequatchie Valley, a long narrow valley in the southeastern part of the Cumberland Plateau, is in East Tennessee. The part of the plateau east of the Sequatchie Valley is called Walden Ridge. One notable detached section of the plateau is Lookout Mountain, which overlooks Chattanooga. West of Chattanooga, the Tennessee River flows through the plateau in the Tennessee River Gorge.

The Cumberland Mountains begin directly north of the Sequatchie Valley and extend northward to the Cumberland Gap at the Tennessee-Kentucky-Virginia tripoint. While technically a separate physiographic region, the Cumberland Mountains are usually considered part of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. The Cumberland Mountains reach elevations above 3500 ft in Tennessee, and their largest subrange is the Crab Orchard Mountains. The Cumberland Trail traverses the eastern escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains.

Counties

 * Anderson
 * Bledsoe
 * Blount
 * Bradley
 * Campbell
 * Carter
 * Claiborne
 * Cocke
 * Cumberland
 * Grainger
 * Greene
 * Hamblen
 * Hamilton
 * Hancock
 * Hawkins
 * Jefferson
 * Johnson
 * Knox
 * Loudon
 * Marion
 * McMinn
 * Meigs
 * Monroe
 * Morgan
 * Polk
 * Rhea
 * Roane
 * Scott
 * Sevier
 * Sullivan
 * Unicoi
 * Union
 * Washington

The Official Tourism Website of Tennessee has a definition of East Tennessee slightly different from the legal definition; the website excludes Cumberland County while including Grundy and Sequatchie Counties.

Climate
Most of East Tennessee has a humid subtropical climate, with the exception of some of the higher elevations in the Blue Ridge and Cumberland Mountains, which are classified as a cooler mountain temperate or humid continental climate. As the highest-lying region in the state, East Tennessee averages slightly lower temperatures than the rest of the state and has the highest rate of snowfall, which averages more than 80 in annually in the highest mountains, although many of the lower elevations often receive no snow. The lowest recorded temperature in state history, at -32 F, was recorded at Mountain City on December 30, 1917. Fog is common, especially in the Ridge-and-Valley region, and often presents a significant hazard to motorists.

Demographics
East Tennessee is the second most populous and most densely populated of the three Grand Divisions. At the 2020 census it had 2,470,105 inhabitants living in its 33 counties, an increase of 142,561, or 6.12%, over the 2010 figure of 2,327,544 residents. Its population was 35.74% of the state's total, and its population density was 182.18 PD/sqmi. Prior to the 2010 census, East Tennessee was the most populous of the Grand Divisions but was surpassed by Middle Tennessee, which contains the rapidly-growing Nashville and Clarksville metropolitan areas.

Demographically, East Tennessee is one of the regions in the United States with one of the highest concentrations of people who identify as White or European American. In the 2010 census, every county in East Tennessee except for Knox and Hamilton, the two most populous counties, had a population that was greater than 90% White. In most counties in East Tennessee, persons of Hispanic or Latino origins outnumber African Americans, which is uncommon in the Southeastern United States. Large African American populations are found in Chattanooga and Knoxville, as well as considerable populations in several smaller cities.

Cities and metropolitan areas
The major cities of East Tennessee are Knoxville, which is near the geographic center of the region; Chattanooga, which is in southeastern Tennessee at the Georgia border; and the "Tri-Cities" of Bristol, Johnson City, and Kingsport, located in the extreme northeastern part of the state. Of the ten metropolitan statistical areas in Tennessee, six are in East Tennessee. Combined statistical areas include Knoxville-Morristown-Sevierville, Chattanooga–Cleveland–Dalton, and Tri-Cities.

Knoxville, with about 190,000 residents, is the state's third largest city and contains the state's third largest metropolitan area, with about 1 million residents. Chattanooga, with a population of more than 180,000, is the state's fourth largest city and anchors a metropolitan area with more than 500,000 residents, of whom approximately one-third live in Georgia. The Tri-Cities, while defined by the Office of Management and Budget as the Kingsport-Bristol and Johnson City metropolitan areas, are usually considered one population center, which is the third-most populous in East Tennessee and the fifth-largest statewide.

Most of East Tennessee's population is found in the Ridge-and Valley region, including that of its major cities. Other important cities in the Ridge and Valley region include Cleveland, Athens, Maryville, Oak Ridge, Sevierville, Morristown, and Greeneville. The region also includes the Cleveland and Morristown metropolitan areas, each of which contain more than 100,000 residents. The Blue Ridge section of the state is much more sparsely populated, its main cities being Elizabethton, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg. Crossville is the largest city in the plateau region, which is also sparsely populated.

Most residents of the East Tennessee region commute by car with the lack of alternative modes of transportation such as commuter rail or regional bus systems. Residents of the metropolitan areas for Knoxville, Morristown, Chattanooga, and the Tri-Cities region have an estimated one-way commute of 23 minutes.

Congressional districts
East Tennessee includes all of the state's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd congressional districts and part of the 4th district. The 1st District is concentrated around the Tri-Cities region and Upper East Tennessee. The 2nd District includes Knoxville and the mountain counties to the south. The 3rd District includes the Chattanooga area and the counties north of Knoxville (the two areas are connected by a narrow corridor in eastern Roane County). The 4th, which extends into an area southeast of Nashville, includes several of East Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau counties.

Native Americans
Much of what is known about East Tennessee's prehistoric Native Americans comes as a result of the Tennessee Valley Authority's reservoir construction, as federal law required archaeological investigations to be conducted in areas that were to be flooded. Excavations at the Icehouse Bottom site near Vonore revealed that Native Americans were living in East Tennessee on at least a semi-annual basis as early as 7,500 B.C. The region's significant Woodland period (1000 B.C. – 1000 A.D.) sites include Rose Island (also near Vonore) and Moccasin Bend (near Chattanooga).

During what archaeologists call the Mississippian period (c. 1000–1600 A.D.), East Tennessee's indigenous inhabitants were living in complex agrarian societies at places such as Toqua and Hiwassee Island, and had formed a minor chiefdom known as Chiaha in the French Broad Valley. Spanish expeditions led by Hernando de Soto, Tristan de Luna, and Juan Pardo all visited East Tennessee's Mississippian-period inhabitants during the 16th century. Some of the Native peoples who are known to have inhabited the region during this time include the Muscogee Creek, Yuchi, and Shawnee.

By the early 18th century, most Natives in Tennessee had disappeared, very likely wiped out by diseases introduced by the Spaniards, leaving the region sparsely populated. The Cherokee began migrating into what is now East Tennessee from what is now Virginia in the latter 17th century, possibly to escape expanding European settlement and diseases in the north. The Cherokee established a series of towns concentrated in the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee valleys that became known as the Overhill towns, since traders from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia had to cross over the mountains to reach them. Early in the 18th century, the Cherokee forced the remaining members of other Native American groups out of the state.

Pioneer period
The first recorded Europeans to reach the area were three expeditions led by Spanish explorers: Hernando de Soto in 1540–1541, Tristan de Luna in 1559, and Juan Pardo in 1566–1567. Pardo recorded the name "Tanasqui" from a local Native American village, which evolved into the state's current name. In 1673, Abraham Wood, a British fur trader, sent an expedition led by James Needham and Gabriel Arthur from Fort Henry in the Colony of Virginia into Overhill Cherokee territory in modern-day northeastern Tennessee. Needham was killed during the expedition and Arthur was taken prisoner, and remained with the Cherokees for more than a year. Longhunters from Virginia explored much of East Tennessee in the 1750s and 1760s in expeditions which lasted several months or even years.

The Cherokee alliance with Britain during the French and Indian War led to the construction of Fort Loudoun in 1756 near present-day Vonore, which was the first British settlement in what is now Tennessee. Fort Loudoun was the westernmost British outpost to that date and was designed by John William Gerard de Brahm and constructed by forces under Captain Raymond Demeré. Shortly after its completion, Demeré relinquished command of the fort to his brother, Captain Paul Demeré. Hostilities erupted between the British and the Overhill Cherokees into an armed conflict, and a siege of the fort ended with its surrender in 1760. The next morning, Paul Demeré and many his men were killed in an ambush nearby, and most of the rest of the garrison was taken prisoner. A peace expedition led by Henry Timberlake in 1761 provided later travelers with invaluable knowledge regarding the location of the Overhill towns and the customs of the Overhill Cherokee.

The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 brought a stream of explorers and traders into the region, among them additional longhunters. In an effort to mitigate conflicts with the Natives, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which forbade settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. Despite this proclamation, migration across the mountains continued, and the first permanent European settlers began arriving in northeastern Tennessee in the late 1760s. In 1769 William Bean, an associate of famed explorer Daniel Boone, built what is generally acknowledged as Tennessee's first permanent Euro-American residence in Tennessee along the Watauga River in present-day Johnson City. Shortly thereafter, James Robertson and a group of migrants from North Carolina (some historians suggest they were refugees of the Regulator wars) formed the Watauga Settlement at Sycamore Shoals in modern-day Elizabethton on lands leased from the Cherokees.

In 1772, the Wataugans established the Watauga Association, which was the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians and the germ cell of the state of Tennessee. Most of these settlers were English or of primarily English descent, but nearly 20% of them were Scotch-Irish. In 1775, the settlers reorganized themselves into the Washington District to support the cause of the American Revolutionary War, which had begun months before. The following year, the settlers petitioned the Colony of Virginia to annex the Washington District to provide protection from Native American attacks, which was denied. Later that year, they petitioned the government of North Carolina to annex the Washington District, which was granted in November 1776.

In 1775, Richard Henderson negotiated a series of treaties with the Cherokee to sell the lands of the Watauga settlements. Later that year, Daniel Boone, under Henderson's employment, blazed a trail from Fort Chiswell in Virginia through the Cumberland Gap, which became part of the Wilderness Road, a major thoroughfare for settlers into Tennessee and Kentucky. That same year, a faction of Cherokees led by Dragging Canoe— angry over the tribe's appeasement of European settlers— split off to form what became known as the Chickamauga faction, which was concentrated around what is now Chattanooga. The next year, the Chickamauga, aligned with British loyalists, attacked Fort Watauga. The warnings of Dragging Canoe's cousin Nancy Ward spared many settlers' lives from the initial attacks. In spite of Dragging Canoe's protests, the Cherokee were continuously induced to sign away most of the tribe's lands to the U.S. government.

During the American Revolution, the Wataugans supplied 240 militiamen (led by John Sevier) to the frontier force known as the Overmountain Men, which defeated British loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. Tennessee's first attempt at statehood was the State of Franklin, formed in 1784 from three Washington District counties. Its capital was initially at Jonesborough and later Greeneville, and eventually grew to include eight counties. After several unsuccessful attempts at statehood, the State of Franklin rejoined North Carolina in 1788. North Carolina ceded the region to the federal government, which designated it as the Southwest Territory on May 26, 1790. William Blount was appointed as the territorial governor by President George Washington, and Blount and James White established Knoxville as the territory's capital in 1791. The Southwest Territory recorded a population of 35,691 in the first United States census that year, about three-fourths of whom resided in what is now East Tennessee.

In addition to the English and Scotch-Irish settlers, there were also Welsh families who settled in East Tennessee in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A larger group of settlers, entirely of English descent, arrived from Virginia's Middle Peninsula. They arrived as a result of large landowners buying up land and expanding in such a way that smaller landholders had to leave the area to prosper.

Antebellum period
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a series of land cessions were negotiated with the Cherokees as settlers pushed south of the Washington District. The 1791 Treaty of Holston, negotiated by William Blount, established terms of relations between the United States and the Cherokees. The First Treaty of Tellico established the boundaries of the Treaty of Holston, and a series of treaties over the next two decades ceded small amounts of Cherokee lands to the U.S. government. In the Calhoun Treaty of 1819, the U.S. government purchased Cherokee lands between the Little Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers. In anticipation of forced removal of the Cherokees, white settlers began moving into Cherokee lands in southeast Tennessee in the 1820s and 1830s.

East Tennessee was home to one of the nation's first abolitionist movements, which arose in the early 19th century. Quakers, who had migrated to the region from Pennsylvania in the 1790s, formed the Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1814. Notable supporters included Presbyterian clergyman Samuel Doak, Tusculum College cofounder Hezekiah Balch, and Maryville College president Isaac Anderson. In 1820, Elihu Embree established The Emancipator— the nation's first exclusively abolitionist newspaper— in Jonesborough. After Embree's death, Benjamin Lundy established the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Greeneville in 1821 to continue Embree's work. By the 1830s, however, the region's abolitionist movement had declined in the face of fierce opposition. The geography of East Tennessee, unlike parts of Middle and West Tennessee, did not allow for large plantation complexes, and as a result, slavery remained relatively uncommon in the region.

In the 1820s, the Cherokees established a government modeled on the U.S. Constitution, and located their capitol at New Echota in northern Georgia. In response to restrictive laws passed by the Georgia legislature, the Cherokees in 1832 moved their capital to the Red Clay Council Grounds in what is now Bradley County, a short distance north of the border with Georgia. A total of eleven general councils were held at the site between 1832 and 1838, during which the Cherokees rejected multiple compromises to surrender their lands east of the Mississippi River and move west. The 1835 Treaty of New Echota which was not approved by the National Council at Red Clay, stipulated that the Cherokee relocate to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, and provided a grace period until May 1838 for them to voluntarily migrate. In 1838 and 1839, U.S. troops forcibly removed nearly 17,000 Cherokees and about 2,000 Black people the Cherokees enslaved from their homes in southeastern Tennessee to Indian Territory. An estimated 4,000 died along the way. The operation was orchestrated from Fort Cass in Charleston, which was constructed on the site of the Indian agency. In the Cherokee language, the event is called Nunna daul Isunyi, meaning "the Trail Where We Cried", and it is commonly known as the Trail of Tears.

The arrival of the railroad in the 1850s brought immediate economic benefits to East Tennessee, primarily to Chattanooga, which had been founded in 1839. Chattanooga quickly developed into a nexus between the mountain communities of Southern Appalachia and the cotton states of the Deep South, being referred to as the Gateway to the Deep South. In 1843, copper was discovered in the Copper Basin in the extreme southeast corner of the state, and by the 1850s, large industrial-scale mining operations were taking place, making the Copper Basin one of the most productive copper mining districts in the nation.

Civil War
The American Civil War sentiments of East Tennesseans were among the most complex of any region in the nation. Because of the rarity of slavery in the region, many East Tennesseans were suspicious of the aristocratic Southern planter class that dominated the Southern Democratic Party and most Southern state legislatures. For this reason, Whig support ran high in East Tennessee in the years leading up to the war, especially in Knox and surrounding counties. In 1860, slaves composed about 9% of East Tennessee's population, compared to 25% statewide. When Tennessee voted on a referendum calling for secession in February 1861, which failed, more than 80% of East Tennesseans voted against it, including majorities in every county except Sullivan and Meigs. In June 1861, nearly 70% of East Tennesseans voted against the state's second ordinance of secession which succeeded statewide. Along with Sullivan and Meigs, however, there were pro-secession majorities in Monroe, Rhea, Sequatchie, and Polk counties. There were also pro-secession majorities within the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, although these cities' respective counties voted decisively against secession.

In June 1861, the Unionist East Tennessee Convention met in Greeneville, where it drafted a petition to the Tennessee General Assembly demanding that East Tennessee be allowed to form a separate Union-aligned state split off from the rest of Tennessee, similar to West Virginia. The legislature rejected the petition, however, and Tennessee Governor Isham Harris ordered Confederate troops to occupy East Tennessee. In the fall of 1861, Unionist guerrillas burned bridges and attacked Confederate sympathizers throughout the region, leading the Confederacy to invoke martial law in parts of East Tennessee. Senator Andrew Johnson and Congressman Horace Maynard—who in spite of being from a Confederate state retained their seats in Congress—continuously pressed President Abraham Lincoln to send troops into East Tennessee, and Lincoln subsequently made the liberation of East Tennessee a top priority. Knoxville Whig editor William "Parson" Brownlow, who had been one of slavery's most outspoken defenders, attacked secessionism with equal fervor and embarked on a speaking tour of the Northern states to rally support for East Tennessee. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson, a War Democrat, as military governor of Tennessee.

Several crucial Civil War military campaigns took place in East Tennessee, although the region did not see any large-scale fighting until the second half of the war, unlike the rest of the state. After being defeated at the Battle of Chickamauga in northwest Georgia in September 1863, Union troops of the Army of the Cumberland under the command of William Rosecrans fled to Chattanooga. Confederate troops under Braxton Bragg attempted to besiege the Union troops into surrendering, but two months later, reinforcements from the Army of the Tennessee under the command of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Hooker, and George Henry Thomas arrived. Under the command of Hooker, the Union troops defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24, and the following day Grant and Thomas completely ran the Confederates out of the city at the Battle of Missionary Ridge. These battles came to be known as the Chattanooga campaign and marked a major turning point in the war, allowing Sherman to launch the Atlanta campaign from the city in the spring of 1864. A few days after the Chattanooga campaign concluded, Confederate General James Longstreet launched the Knoxville campaign in an effort to take control of the city. The campaign ended in a Union victory at the Battle of Fort Sanders on November 29, which was under the command of Union General Ambrose Burnside, although Longstreet defeated Union troops under the command of James M. Shackelford at the Battle of Bean's Station two weeks later. By the beginning of 1864, East Tennessee was largely under the control of the Union Army. Despite its Unionist leanings, however, it was the last part of the state to fall to the Union.

Reconstruction and the Progressive Era
After the Civil War, Northern capitalists began investing heavily in East Tennessee, which helped the region's ravaged economy recover much faster than most of the South. Most new industry in Tennessee was constructed in East Tennessee during this time, and Chattanooga became one of the first industrialized cities in the South. Knoxville also experienced a modest manufacturing boom, and new factories were constructed in other small towns such as Kingsport, Johnson City, Cleveland, Morristown, and Maryville, making them amongst the first Southern cities to experience the results of the Industrial Revolution in the United States. Other cities in the region, such as Lenoir City, Harriman, Rockwood, Dayton, and Englewood, were founded as company towns during this period. The Burra Burra Mine—established in the 1890s in the Copper Basin—was at its height one of the nation's copper mining operations.

In 1899, the world's first Coca-Cola bottling plant was built in Chattanooga. In the early 1900s, railroad and sawmill innovations allowed logging firms such as the Little River Lumber Company and Babock Lumber to harvest the virgin forests of the Great Smokies and adjacent ranges. Coal mining operations were established in coal-rich areas of the Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains, namely in Scott County, northern Campbell County, and western Anderson County. In the early 1890s, Tennessee's controversial convict lease system sparked a miners' uprising in Anderson County that became known as the Coal Creek War. While the uprising was eventually crushed, it induced the state to do away with convict leasing, making Tennessee the first southern state to end the controversial practice.

Other ambitious ventures during the period included the construction of Ocoee Dam No. 1 and Hales Bar Dam (completed in 1911 and 1913 respectively) by the forerunners of the Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO). In the 1920s, Tennessee Eastman—destined to become the state's largest employer—was established in Kingsport, and in nearby Elizabethton the German-owned Bemberg Corporation built two large rayon mills. Equally ambitious was the Aluminum Company of America's establishment of a massive aluminum smelting operation at what is now Alcoa in 1914, which required the construction of a large plant and company town and the building of a series of dams along the Little Tennessee River to supply the plant with hydroelectric power.

In the late 19th to early 20th century, leisure resorts oriented on mineral springs flourished in the region, with the most popular being Tate Springs in Grainger County, which attracted many prestigious families of the era, including the Ford, Rockefeller, Firestone, Studebaker, and Mellon families. The region received international attention in the public execution of a circus elephant via hanging. After killing its trainer in a circus performance in Kingsport, the elephant was transported to Erwin in nearby Unicoi County and hanged in front of a crowd of roughly 2,500 residents. A picture of the undertaking was widely distributed by American pulp magazine Argosy.

In the 1920s, East Tennessee surpassed Middle Tennessee as the state's most populous Grand Division, primarily as a result of the larger African American population in that region fleeing to Northern industrial cities as part of the Great Migration.

Great Depression, TVA, and World War II
Over a period of two decades, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), created in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression, drastically altered the economic, cultural, and physical landscape of East Tennessee. TVA sought to build a series of dams across the Tennessee River watershed to control flooding, bring cheap electricity to East Tennessee, and connect Knoxville and Chattanooga to the nation's inland waterways by creating a continuously navigable channel along the entirety of the Tennessee River. Starting with Norris Dam in 1933, the agency built 10 dams in East Tennessee (and five more across the border in North Carolina and Georgia) over a period of two decades. Melton Hill and Nickajack were added in the 1960s, and the last, Tellico Dam, was completed in 1979 after a contentious five-year legal battle with environmentalists. TVA also gained control of TEPCO's assets after a legal struggle in the 1930s with TEPCO president Jo Conn Guild and attorney Wendell Willkie that was eventually dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

TVA's construction of hydroelectric dams in East Tennessee would receive criticism with for what some have perceived as excessive use of its authority of eminent domain and an unwillingness to compromise with landowners. All of TVA's hydroelectric projects in East Tennessee were made possible through the use of eminent domain and required the removal of 125,000 Tennessee Valley residents. Residents who refused to sell to the TVA were often forced by court orders and lawsuits. Several dam projects inundated historic Native American sites and American Revolution-era towns. On some occasions, land that TVA had acquired through eminent domain that was expected to be inundated was not and was sold to private developers for the construction of planned communities such as Tellico Village in Loudon County.

East Tennessee's physiographic layout and rural nature made it the ideal location for the uranium enrichment facilities of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. federal government's top secret World War II-era initiative to build the first atomic bomb. Starting in 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built what is now the city of Oak Ridge, and the following year work began on the enrichment facilities, K-25 and Y-12. During the same period, Tennessee Eastman built the Holston Ordnance Works in Kingsport for the manufacture of an explosive known as Composition B, and the Department of Defense constructed the Volunteer Ordnance Works in Chattanooga to produce TNT. The ALCOA corporation, seeking to meet the wartime demand for aluminum (which was needed for aircraft construction), built its North Plant, which at the time of its completion was the world's largest plant under a single roof. To meet the region's skyrocketing demand for electricity, TVA hastened its dam construction, completing Cherokee and Douglas dams in record time and building the massive Fontana Dam just across the state line in North Carolina.

Mid-20th century to present
In 1955, Oak Ridge High School became the first public school in Tennessee to be integrated. This occurred one year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial segregation to be unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. In 1956, judge Robert Love Taylor ordered nearby Clinton High School to be integrated, and a crisis developed when pro-segregationists threatened violence, prompting Governor Frank G. Clement to send Tennessee National Guard troops to assist with the integration process.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, federal investments into urbanized areas provided major cities of the East Tennessee region to establish urban renewal initiatives, often involving the demolition or redevelopment of blighted commercial areas or neighborhoods for new public buildings and freeways. These projects would often involve the controversial removal and redlining of poverty-stricken and minority households.

In 1965, Congress created the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to improve economic development and job opportunities in the Appalachian region. The program resulted in the construction of new and improved highways in East Tennessee through the Appalachian Development Highway System and brought new industries to rural, impoverished counties in the region that had previously been dependent on declining sectors such as coal mining and logging. With the investment of the ARC, several cities emerged as industrial hubs of the East Tennessee region, including Cleveland, Kingsport, Knoxville, and Morristown. Beginning around this time, East Tennessee, along with the rest of the state, began to benefit from the nationwide Sun Belt phenomenon, which brought additional economic growth to the region. The region saw its most rapid growth in the 1970s. Chattanooga, however, began to decline in the 1960s and was declared by the Federal government to be the most polluted city in the country in 1969. In the mid-1980s, the city leaders launched a program called "Vision 2000" which worked to revitalize and reinvent the city's economy and eventually resulted in a reversal of Chattanooga's decline.

TVA's construction of the Tellico Dam in Loudon County became the subject of national controversy in the 1970s when the endangered snail darter fish was reported to be affected by the project. After lawsuits by environmental groups, the debate was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court case Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill in 1978, leading to amendments of the Endangered Species Act.

In 1982, a World's Fair was held in Knoxville. The fair was also known as the "Knoxville International Energy Exposition," and its theme was "Energy Turns the World." The fair attracted more than 11 million visitors during its six-month run and is the most recent world's fair to have been held in the United States. In 1996, the whitewater slalom events of the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games were held on the Ocoee River in Polk County. These are the only Olympic sporting events to have ever been held in Tennessee.

Several high profile disasters have occurred in East Tennessee since the latter 20th century. On May 13, 1972, the deadliest motor vehicle accident in state history occurred near Bean Station on U.S. Route 11W when a tractor-trailer and a Greyhound bus collided head-on, killing 14 and injuring 15. The accident prompted the rapid construction of additional four-lane arterial highways in the East Tennessee region throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, as well as placed a focus on the completion of Interstates 40, 75, and 81, which occurred in the mid-1970s. On December 11, 1990, a 99-vehicle collision occurred in dense fog on Interstate 75 near Calhoun, killing 12 and injuring 42, and was reportedly the largest motor vehicle accident in U.S. history at the time, in terms of the number of vehicles. On December 23, 2008, the largest industrial waste spill in United States history occurred at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant when a dike failed, releasing more than 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry into the Emory and Clinch Rivers. The cleanup cost TVA more than $1 billion and was completed in 2015.

Music
Appalachian music has evolved from a blend of English and Scottish ballads, Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes, African-American blues, and religious music. In 1916 and 1917, British folklorist Cecil Sharp visited Flag Pond, Sevierville, Harrogate, and other rural areas in the region where he transcribed dozens of examples of "Old World" ballads that had been passed down generation to generation from the region's early English settlers. Uncle Am Stuart, Charlie Bowman, Clarence Ashley, G. B. Grayson, and Theron Hale were among the most successful early musicians from East Tennessee.

In 1927, the Victor Talking Machine Company conducted a series of recording sessions in Bristol that saw the rise of musicians such as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. Subsequent recording sessions, such as the Johnson City sessions in 1928 and the Knoxville St. James Sessions in 1930 proved lucrative, but by the late 1930s, the success of the Grand Ole Opry had lured much of the region's talent to Nashville. In the 1940s, the Grand Ole Opry and associated music labels began using "country" instead of "hillbilly" for their genre, hoping to attract a wider audience.

Union County would prove influential to later developments in country music with musicians Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, and Carl Smith who were born in the county assisted with the international breakthrough of the genre, and the development of the Nashville sound and rockabilly.

In popular culture
East Tennessee culture has been represented in several songs, television shows, and films. The Ford Show, which ran on NBC from 1956 until 1961, was hosted by Tennessee Ernie Ford from Bristol. Christy, a 1990s CBS television series, was based on village life in 1910s East Tennessee. The show, which was later developed into a television movie series, featured traditional mountain music. "ChristyFest", held each summer, is dedicated to the novel, musical, TV series, and movies, and includes live folk music. The television film Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors aired on NBC in 2015. The film was inspired by her 1971 song and album of the same name, and recounts her childhood in the mountains of East Tennessee. The film was generally praised by critics, and received the Tex Ritter Award from the Academy of Country Music.

The folk hero Daniel Boone, who helped explore East Tennessee, was honored in the soundtrack for the television series Daniel Boone, which ran from 1964 until 1970. The last of three versions of the theme song was sung by The Imperials, a Grammy-winning Christian music group. The Ballad of Davy Crockett helped to popularize the 1955 film Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. First recorded and introduced on the television series Disneyland in 1954, it has been covered by a number of artists, most notably Tennessee Ernie Ford. The song's lyrics say Davy Crockett was "born on a mountaintop in Tennessee", but his actual birthplace was in Limestone, Tennessee, the location of Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park. In addition to his renowned frontier exploits and military service, Crockett served Tennessee as a state legislator and Congressman.

Economy
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, East Tennessee's economy relied heavily on subsistence agriculture. Agriculture still plays a vital role in Tennessee's economy. In the cities, however, manufacturing was the main source of prosperity and growth. In the years following the Civil War, Chattanooga became one of the first industrial cities in the South. Other cities in East Tennessee such as Knoxville, Kingsport, Cleveland, Maryville, and Morristown were among some of the first cities in Tennessee to experience the effects of the Industrial revolution in the United States, and most manufacturing facilities constructed in the state in the latter 19th century located in East Tennessee. The region's economy remained predominantly agrarian during this time, however.

Business and industry
Major companies and businesses headquartered in East Tennessee include Pilot Flying J, the Baptist Hospital system, Regal Cinemas in Knoxville, and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, U.S. Xpress, Covenant Transport, and Unum in Chattanooga, and Eastman Chemical in Kingsport.

A variety of goods are manufactured in East Tennessee, including chemicals, foods and drinks, automotive components, and electronics. The largest manufacturer in the region is Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, with more than 10,000 employees, and other chemical companies operate several other chemical manufacturing facilities in the region. Volkswagen operates an assembly plant in Chattanooga, and several automotive parts manufacturers, including Denso, operate plants in East Tennessee. Coca-Cola was first produced in Chattanooga in 1899, and many well-known food and drink brands originated and are made in East Tennessee, including Mayfield Dairy products, Moon Pie, Little Debbie, Mountain Dew, Bush's Beans, and M&M's. The region has emerged in recent years as one of the top locations for the legal production of moonshine. East Tennessee is a top location where boats are manufactured, with companies such as Sea Ray, MasterCraft, and Malibu Boats, operating facilities in the region. Other important products produced in East Tennessee include consumer electronics, electrical equipment, and fabricated metal products.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge are two of the largest employers in East Tennessee. ORNL conducts scientific research in materials science, nuclear physics, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology, and national security, and is also the largest national laboratory in the Department of Energy (DOE) system by size, and has the third highest budget. Both ORNL and Y-12 also support many jobs through contracting firms in the area. Since the 1990s, the geographical area between Oak Ridge and Knoxville has been known as the Tennessee Technology Corridor, with more than 500 high-tech firms located in the region. With the expanded smart grid in Chattanooga, and the fastest internet in the Western Hemisphere, Chattanooga has begun to grow its technical and financial sectors with its burgeoning start-up scene.

The town of Erwin, located in the Tri-Cities area, is home to Nuclear Fuel Services, which operates a manufacturing and uranium enrichment facility converting Cold War-era weapons uranium into commercially usable reactor fuel for power plants around the United States, and is the largest supplier of uranium fuel for the United States Navy since 1960.

Energy
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has its administrative operations headquartered in Knoxville and power operations headquartered in Chattanooga, and provides nearly all of East Tennessee's electricity. TVA operates the Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants in Soddy-Daisy and Rhea County, respectively, the Kingston and Bull Run coal-fired plants, the latter of which is near Oak Ridge, the John Sevier combined cycle natural gas-fired plant near Rogersville, the Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant near Chattanooga, a wind-powered facility near Oak Ridge, and several hydroelectric dams in East Tennessee.

The two newest civilian nuclear power reactors in the United States are located at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Unit 1 began operation in 1996 and Unit 2 started operating in 2016, making it the only new nuclear power reactor to begin operation in the United States in the 21st century. Officials at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the TVA are studying advancements in nuclear power as an energy source in a joint effort, including small modular reactors.

Mining
The Ridge-and-Valley region of East Tennessee is home to several of the largest deposits of zinc in the United States, including the Mossy Creek deposits in Jefferson County and the Grainger and Hancock counties' deposits, respectively.

Tennessee marble, a rare crystalline form of limestone, is found only in several deposits in the East Tennessee region in the entire world. Its strong resemblance to true marble when polished has made it a popular construction material found in several structures and monuments around the United States. The stone occurs in belts of Ordovician-period rocks known as the Holston Formation, Tennessee marble achieved such popularity in the late-19th century that Knoxville, the stone's primary finishing and distribution center, became known as "The Marble City."

Tourism
While the mountain springs of East Tennessee and the cooler upper elevations of its mountainous areas have long provided a retreat from the region's summertime heat, much of East Tennessee's tourism industry is a result of land conservation movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, established in 1934, led to a tourism boom in Sevier and Blount counties, effectively converting the tiny mountain hamlets of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge into resort towns. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States, receiving more than 14 million visitors annually. The park also anchors a massive tourism industry in nearby Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville, which is the third largest in the state. Attractions include Dollywood (the most visited ticketed attraction in Tennessee), Ober Gatlinburg, and Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies.

Other tourist attractions maintained by the National Park Service are Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, both in the Cumberland Mountains, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. East Tennessee is home to several scenic roadways including the Foothills Parkway, the East Tennessee Crossing Byway, the Norris Freeway, Cumberland National Scenic Byway, the Tail of the Dragon, the Cherohala Skyway, and the Ocoee Scenic Byway.

The Appalachian Trail, one of the world's most well-known hiking trails, was built in the mid-1930s and passes along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The Cherokee National Forest was established during the same period and preserves most of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Tennessee that are not part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Ocoee River in Polk County attracts thousands of whitewater rafters each year and is the most rafted river in the nation. The nearby gentler Hiwassee River is also a top attraction in East Tennessee. Reservoirs created in the aftermath of the TVA's hydroelectric projects in the upper East Tennessee region, including Cherokee, Douglas, Fort Loudoun, and Norris provide recreational opportunities on and along the shores via water sports, boating, fishing, and "second-home" development.

Attractions in Chattanooga include the Tennessee Aquarium, the nation's largest freshwater aquarium, and Rock City, and Ruby Falls on Lookout Mountain, the latter two of which are perhaps best known for their unique advertisements painted on barn roofs across the southeast. The Tennessee Aquarium coincided with the revitalization of Chattanooga's riverfront, which helped to bolster the downtown districts. The city has become an outdoor sports mecca, being heralded as the "Best Town Ever" by Outside magazine.

Roads
Interstate 75 (I-75) enters East Tennessee in Chattanooga, runs northeast to Knoxville, and then turns north, passing through the Cumberland Mountains into Kentucky. Interstate 40 (I-40) traverses the region in an east to west alignment, passing through Knoxville. I-40 and I-75 run concurrent for nearly 20 mi in Knoxville and carry more than 210,000 vehicles per day at their busiest point, the highest traffic volume in Tennessee. Interstate 81 (I-81) begins about 35 mi east of Knoxville, and runs northeast to Bristol. Interstate 26 (I-26), while technically an east–west route, begins in Kingsport, runs south to Johnson City, and enters North Carolina to the south, crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains. Interstate 24 (I-24) terminates in Chattanooga, and connects the region to Nashville. In Knoxville, both I-40 and I-75 each have auxiliary routes: I-140, I-640, and I-275. Several designated corridors of the Appalachian Development Highway System are located in the region, including Corridors B, F, J, K, S, and V, which provide expressway connection to Interstate Highways. Other major surface routes in East Tennessee which are part of the National Highway System (NHS) are U.S. Routes 11W, 19, 25E, 27, 64, 321, and 411.

Air, rail, and water
Major airports in East Tennessee include McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) in Alcoa outside of Knoxville, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA), and Tri-Cities Regional Airport (TRI) in Blountville. Several other general aviation airports are located in the region. Norfolk Southern Railway operates rail lines in East Tennessee, include multiple tracks that intersect in Knoxville and Chattanooga. The Tennessee River is the only navigable waterway in East Tennessee via a lock-and-canal system at through several TVA hydroelectric dams.

Higher education
The region's major public universities are the Knoxville and Chattanooga campuses of the University of Tennessee and East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. Private four-year institutions include Bryan College, Carson–Newman University, King University, Lee University, Lincoln Memorial University, Maryville College, Milligan University, Johnson University, Tennessee Wesleyan University, and Tusculum University. Several public community colleges and vocational/technical schools also are located in the region, such as Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Walters State Community College in Morristown, Pellissippi State Community College near Knoxville, Chattanooga State Community College, and Cleveland State Community College. The Tennessee College of Applied Technology has several campuses across the area.

The University of Tennessee's athletic teams, nicknamed the "Volunteers", or "Vols", are the region's most popular sports teams, and constitute a multimillion-dollar industry. The university's football team plays at Neyland Stadium, one of the nation's largest stadiums. Neyland is flanked by the Thompson–Boling Arena, which has broken several attendance records for college men's and women's basketball.

Legal structure
According to the state constitution, no more than two of the Tennessee Supreme Court's five justices can come from any one Grand Division. The Supreme Court rotates meeting in courthouses in each of the three divisions. The Supreme Court building for East Tennessee is in Knoxville. A similar rule applies to certain other commissions and boards as well, to prevent them from showing a geographic and population bias.

Politics
Politically, East Tennessee has historically been an outlier in Tennessee and the South. It is one of the few regions in the South that have consistently voted Republican since the Civil War and one of the oldest Republican regions in the United States. Indeed, several counties in the region are among the few in the country to have never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election.

The state's 1st and 2nd congressional districts, anchored in the Tri-Cities and Knoxville respectively, are among the few ancestrally Republican regions in the South. The 1st has been held by Republicans or their predecessors without interruption since 1881, and for all but four years since 1859. The 2nd has been in the hands of Republicans or their predecessors since 1855. Until the 1950s, congressmen from the 1st and 2nd Districts were among the few truly senior Republican congressmen from the South. Historically, Democrats were more competitive in the Chattanooga-based 3rd district, but recent trends have made it almost as staunchly Republican as the 1st and 2nd districts.

East Tennessee Republican leanings are rooted in its antebellum Whig sentiments (historian O.P. Temple actually traces this sentiment back to the anti-aristocratic Covenanters of Scotland). As in much of southern Appalachia, the region's yeoman farmers clashed with the large-scale planters and business interests that controlled the Democratic Party and dominated most southern state legislatures. East Tennesseans revered the likes of John Sevier and Davy Crockett and were drawn to the political philosophies of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. They tended to reject the policies of the Southern Democrats, who were deemed "aristocratic" (Andrew Jackson's popularity in the Chattanooga area— which he helped open to European-American settlement— created a stronger Democratic base in southeastern Tennessee, however). In the early 1840s, state Senator Andrew Johnson actually introduced a bill in the state legislature that would have created a separate state in East Tennessee.

While the Whigs disintegrated in the 1850s, East Tennesseans continued their opposition to Southern Democrats with the Opposition Party and the Constitutional Union Party, the latter capturing the state's electoral votes in 1860. Pro-Union sentiment during the Civil War (which was reinforced by the Confederate army's occupation of the region) evolved into support for President Abraham Lincoln. The congressmen from the 1st and 2nd districts were the only congressmen who did not resign when Tennessee seceded. The residents of those districts immediately identified with the Republicans after hostilities ceased and have supported the Republican Party ever since.

The Radical Republican post-war policies of Governor Brownlow greatly polarized the state along party lines, with East Tennesseans mostly supporting Brownlow and Middle and West Tennesseans mostly rejecting him. The Southern Democrats regained control of the state government in the early 1870s, but Republican sentiment remained solid in East Tennessee, especially in the 1st and 2nd Districts. By the 1880s, the state's Democrats had an unwritten agreement with the state's Republicans whereby Republicans would split presidential patronage of Republican presidencies with the Democrats so long as the Democrats allowed them continued influence in state affairs.

In 1888, Pennsylvania-born Henry Clay Evans was elected to the congressional seat for the 3rd District. Evans, who rejected compromise and the splitting of presidential patronage with the state's Democrats, strongly supported a bill that would have turned over control of state elections to the federal government. In response, the state legislature gerrymandered the 3rd District, ensuring Evans' defeat in 1890. After 1901, more than a half-century passed without the state legislature redistricting, in spite of population shifts. In 1959, Memphis resident Charles Baker sued the legislature in hopes of forcing it to redraw the districts, culminating in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Baker v. Carr. In the decades after this case, the 3rd District has been redrawn several times, and a new 4th District was carved in part out of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Districts. The 2000s round of redistricting made the 3rd more Republican and the 4th more Democratic. After the 2010 elections and the redistricting before 2012, though, the Republicans in control of state government made both the 3rd and 4th Districts significantly more Republican, and both are now among the most Republican districts in the country.

title: East Tennessee


text:
ESB Group

The Electricity Supply Board (ESB; Bord Soláthair an Leictreachais) is a state owned (95%; the rest are owned by employees) electricity company operating in the Republic of Ireland. While historically a monopoly, the ESB now operates as a commercial semi-state concern in a "liberalised" and competitive market. It is a statutory corporation whose members are appointed by the government of Ireland.

Business areas
The ESB is composed of several distinct, separate and legally demarcated companies. By business area, the principal companies are:

ESB Networks Limited manages construction and maintenance of the electricity transmission system. (The transmission system operator is an independent state company, EirGrid).

ESB Generation and Wholesale Markets (ESB GWM) operates a portfolio of power stations across the country, along with holdings in wind and other renewables.

Electric Ireland is a regulated supply company, one of fourteen companies (as of 10 October 2021 ) operating in the domestic market. Since 4 April 2011 the Commission for Energy Regulation no longer sets the company's prices; the trade-off for this was that the division was required to change its name from ESB to Electric Ireland, to "remove confusion" between the ESB's role as operator of the electricity network and a supplier in that market. The previous name, ESB Independent Energy, was dropped in January 2012.

ESB International Limited is responsible for the company's unregulated activities, principally providing electrical engineering consultancy services around the world. It has holdings in many areas, such as power-generation joint ventures, renewables development, and computing consultancy.

Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the electricity network in Northern Ireland, and has been part of the ESB since they purchased it from Viridian in December 2010. However, the ESB does not own the former supply business of NIE, which was retained by Viridian.

History

The ESB was established by the fledgling Irish Free State government under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927 to manage Ireland's electricity supply after the successful Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha. The scheme was Ireland's first large-scale electricity plant – and at the time, it provided 80% of the total energy demands of Ireland. To give an idea of the growth in demand, the output of Ardnacrusha is now approximately two per cent of national peak demand for power.

By 1937, plans were being finalised for the construction of several more hydro-electric plants. The plans called for stations at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls, Leixlip (all in Leinster), Clady, Cliff and Cathaleen's Fall (between Belleek and Ballyshannon in County Donegal), Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra (in County Cork). All these new plants were completed by 1949, and together harnessed approximately 75% of Ireland's inland water power potential. Many of these plants are still in operation ; however, as could be expected with continuing growth in demand, their combined capacity falls far short of Ireland's modern needs.

With Ireland's towns and cities benefiting from electricity, the new government pushed the idea of Rural Electrification. Between 1946 and 1979, the ESB connected in excess of 420,000 customers in rural Ireland. The Rural Electrification Scheme has been described as "the Quiet Revolution" because of the major socio-economic change it brought about. The process was greatly helped in 1955 by the Electricity Supply Amendment Act, 1955.

In 1947, the ESB, needing ever more generation capacity, built the North Wall station on a 7.5-acre (30,000 m2) site in Dublin's industrial port area on the north side of the River Liffey on the site of an old oil refinery. The original station consisted of one 12.5 MW steam turbine that was originally purchased for a power station at Portarlington but instead used at North Wall. Other power stations built around this time included the peat fired stations at Portarlington, County Laois, and Allenwood in County Kildare.

Because of the risks of becoming dependent on imported fuel sources and the potential for harvesting and utilising indigenous peat, the ESB – in partnership with Bord na Móna – established those stations and ESB also built Lanesboro power station in 1958. Located in County Longford, the plant burns peat, cut by Bord na Móna in the bogs of the Irish midlands. In 1965 the Shannonbridge station was commissioned. It is located in County Offaly. The two stations have been replaced by new peat-fired stations near the same locations, and peat is also used to power the independent Edenderry Power plant, in County Offaly.

As in most countries, energy consumption is low at night and high during the day. Aware of the substantial waste of night-time capacity, the ESB commissioned the Turlough Hill pumped storage hydro-electric station in 1968. This station, located in County Wicklow, pumps water uphill at night with the excess energy created by other stations, and releases it downhill during the day to turn turbines. The plant can generate up to 292 MW of power – but output is limited in terms of hours because of the storage capacity of the reservoir.

The 1970s brought about a continued increase in Ireland's industrialisation and with it, a greater demand for energy. This new demand was to be met by the construction of the country's two largest power stations – Poolbeg in 1971 and Moneypoint in 1979. The latter, in County Clare, remains Ireland's only coal-burning plant and can produce 915 MW – just shy of the 1015 MW capacity of Poolbeg. In 2002 and 2003, new independent stations were constructed – Huntstown Power (north Dublin) and Dublin Bay Power (Ringsend, Dublin).

In 1991, the ESB established the ESB Archive to store historical documents relating to the company and its impact on Irish life.

On 8 September 2003, two of the last remaining places in Ireland unconnected to the national grid – Inishturbot and Inishturk islands (off the coast of Galway)- were finally connected to the mains supply. Some islands are still powered by small diesel-run power stations.

60 wind farms are currently connected to the power system (July 2006) and have the capacity to generate 590 MW of power, depending on wind conditions. These wind farms are mainly owned by independent companies and landowners.

On 16 March 2005, the ESB announced that it was to sell its ShopElectric (ESB Retail) chain of shops, with the exception of the Dublin Fleet Street and Cork Academy Street outlets, to Bank of Scotland (Ireland), converting them into main street banks. Existing staff were offered positions as bank tellers.

On 27 March 2008, the ESB announced a €22bn capital investment programme in renewable energy technology, with the aim to halve its carbon emissions within 12 years and achieve carbon net-zero by 2035.

EirGrid
On 1 July 2006, a new state owned company, EirGrid plc, separate from all parties in the Irish electricity sector, took over responsibility for the operation of the Irish national grid. It has its own separate board and it reports to the CER and its main shareholder, the Irish government. It was established as the operator of the Irish transmission system with ownership remaining with ESB Networks. On 12 March 2007, the Irish Government Policy on Energy stated that ownership of the transmission system would be vested in EirGrid from end 2008. EirGrid is responsible for balancing electricity consumption and generation and for the development of the power transmission system. Eirgrid, in conjunction with System Operator Northern Ireland, operates the all-island wholesale electricity market.

Facilities

Tarbert and Great Island were sold to Endesa in 2008 under the asset-divestment strategy agreed with the CER. This aims to lessen ESB GWM's market dominant position.

The ESB also has significant holdings in wind generation, principally through its wholly owned subsidiary, Hibernian Wind Power.

Standards
The Shannon Scheme was the start of the ESB's heavy reliance on German and Swedish electro-technology. Siemens, AEG and ASEA (Now ABB) equipment was used throughout the Irish generation and distribution system. The Irish system standardised on the 220 volt 50 Hz (now 230 volt) single phase and 380 volt (now 400 volt) three-phase supply systems which had been developed by Siemens and AEG in Germany. Residential installations followed a mixture of British (BS) and German (VDE) & (DIN) standards.

Siemens standard Diazed and the more modern Neozed fuses remain the standard type of fuse used in domestic and industrial installations and modern circuit breakers comply with German DIN standards.

British core colours red (live), black (neutral) and green (earth/ground) were used. These were later updated to brown (live), blue (neutral) and green-and-yellow (earth/ground) as per CENELEC and European standards.

Three-phase core colours also comply with EU standards: brown (L1), black (L2), grey (L3), blue (neutral), green & yellow (earth/ground)

British wiring accessories have generally been used in residential and light commercial installations e.g. junction boxes, light switches, wires and cables etc. However, in recent years European standard wiring accessories are beginning to replace some of these.

In industrial installations, Irish standards have always tended to follow German (DIN) and (VDE) norms.

Earthing/grounding system
Where this system is used, all the metal pipework must be bonded i.e. connected to the system's earth/ground creating an equipotential zone. In such an installation earth straps and yellow and green earth wires can be seen connected to pipework under sinks, in heating systems etc.
 * TN-C-S is preferred. This is referred to in Ireland as a "neutralised" supply. Most homes and businesses are connected to such a system.
 * TT system is used where TN-C-S earthing is not possible due to the design of the local distribution network, or the geology. This system is referred to as 'unneutralised' or 'not neutralised'.

Where a TT network connection is used, the entire supply must be protected by an RCD

Converting a TT supply to a TN-C supply "neutralisation" may only be carried out by an ESB engineer with the approval of ESB Networks. Under no circumstances should a homeowner, or an electrical contractor make any connection between the Earth/Ground and Neutral. To do so inappropriately could expose people to a risk of serious shock or electrocution.

Plugs and socket outlets

German Schuko socket outlets were once widely used alongside the British standard BS546 round pin plugs (both 3-pin and 2-pin varieties). However, both of these systems were replaced by BS 1363, standardised as Irish Standard IS 401 (Plug) and IS411 (Socket outlet). This standard eliminated incompatibilities between Ireland and Northern Ireland and was chosen as it was completely incompatible with both the old Schuko or BS 546 installations and encouraged people to rewire their homes to comply with the new standard. It removed the possibility of connecting Class I (requiring an earth connection) appliances, to socket outlets that are either unearthed (ungrounded) or with incompatible earthing contacts – e.g. 2-pin side-earthed Schuko plug will not make earth contact with a 3-hole, 5-amp BS 546 socket. Until UK and Irish voltages were standardised at 230 volts in the 1990s, it was common for such plugs to be pre-fitted on appliances destined for the Irish market, although they were prohibited on appliances destined for the United Kingdom market. Both countries now require the pre-fitting of BS 1363 plugs on domestic appliances.

It is now extremely rare to find a non-BS 1363 plug in use.

The 5-amp version of BS 546 is sometimes used for lamps controlled by a central switch or dimmer. They may also be used for other specialist purposes. It is, therefore, not advisable to connect an appliance to such a socket outlet and tourists should not use adaptors to connect to them if they are present in hotel bedrooms. They are exclusively for lighting or specialist purposes.

Industrial, heavy commercial and stage/studio installations use European standard IS EN 60309:1999 / IEC 60309 plugs and sockets. These are also used for stage and studio lighting, in recent preference to BS 546 15-amp fittings.

Wiring
The distribution board system used in Irish homes also differs substantially from those used in the UK and elsewhere. All distribution boards (fuse boxes) are required to have a 'main fuse' or 'main breaker' rated at the maximum permissible load for that installation. Typically, this is a 63 A fuse (Compared with 80 or 100 amps typically found in the UK) and a switch, or a Minized fuse isolator which accepts a Neozed fuse.

The distribution boards have been using DIN rail modular mounting systems for several decades. Even older fuse systems may be mounted on DIN rails.

30 mA RCD protection is required for all socket outlets since 1981, however it may also be present on older installations.

Homes are typically wired as follows:
 * Lighting : 10 amp radials
 * Socket outlets: 16 amp or 20 amp radials (RCD required) (32 A ring final circuits are permitted, but are not generally used as frequently as in the UK and are quite rare)
 * Fixed appliances : 16 amp or 20 amp radials (RCD may be required)
 * Water heater : 20 amp radial (RCD required)
 * Cookers : 32–45 amp radial (RCD not required, but may be fitted optionally)
 * Hob : 32–45 amp radial (RCD not required, but may be fitted optionally)
 * Showers: 32 – 45 amp radial (RCD protected)
 * Outdoor sockets : 16 or 20 amp radials (RCD required)

Lighting
Bayonet mount bulbs are used in most standard fittings and have been the dominant standard in most installations since the introduction of electric lighting in Ireland. Various styles of bayonet cap and mounts are used for a variety of sizes and types of bulbs, including spots and halogens.

Edison screw fittings are not as common, but may be found on some imported lighting equipment, particularly from southern Europe.

Low voltage halogen bulbs use bipin fittings.

Standards are controlled by the ElectroTechnical Council of Ireland (ETCI) and the National Standards Authority of Ireland.

Employees
The ESB is one of the largest companies in Ireland and employs around 7,000 people. It is 5% owned by its workers – this ownership is known as ESB ESOP (Employee Share Ownership Plan) Trustee Limited. The company is heavily unionised with the IWU (Independent Workers Union) being the largest Network Technician union in the company, and the Energy Services Union devoted to representing more senior staff at the organisation. The last major strike was in 1991, though strike action has been threatened as recently as February 2005 and often at times of industrial dispute. National surveys show, in line with other similar semi-state sector workers, that wages are above the national average – one recent survey showed that the average salary costs are twice the national average. It should, however, be remembered that workers of the company may be "on call" after hours, weekends and at holidays because of the unpredictability of emergencies.

Print

 * R. O'Connor, J.A. Crutchfield, B.J. Whelan. Socio-Economic Impact of the Construction of the Esb Power-Station at Moneypoint, Co. Clare (Economic and Social Research Institute, 1981) ISBN 0-7070-0041-6
 * Tim Hastings. Semi-States in Crisis: The Challenge for Industrial Relations in the ESB and Other Major Semi-State Companies (Oak Tree Press, 1994) ISBN 1-872853-79-X
 * Michael Shiel "The Quiet Revolution – The Electrification of Rural Ireland" (O'Brien Press) ISBN 0-86278-840-4

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: ESB Group


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Miami River (Florida)

The Miami River is a river in the U.S. state of Florida that drains out of the Everglades and runs through the city of Miami, including Downtown. The 5.5 mi long river flows from the terminus of the Miami Canal at Miami International Airport to Biscayne Bay. It was originally a natural river inhabited at its mouth by the Tequesta Native Americans, but it was dredged and is now polluted throughout its route through Miami-Dade County. The mouth of the river is home to the Port of Miami and many other businesses whose pressure to maintain it has helped to improve the river's condition.

Etymology
Although it is widely believed that the name is derived from a Native American word that means "sweet water," the earliest mention of the name comes from Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a captive of Native Americans in southern Florida for 17 years, when he referred to what is now Lake Okeechobee as the "Lake of Mayaimi, which is called Mayaimi because it is very large". The Mayaimi people were named after the lake around which they lived. Spanish records include the cacique of "Maimi" in a group of 280 Florida Native Americans that arrived in Cuba in 1710. Reports on a Spanish Mission to the Biscayne Bay area in 1743 mention "Maymies" or "Maimíes" living nearby. The river has also been known as the Garband River, Rio Ratones, Fresh Water River, Sweetwater River, and Lemon River. It has been known as the Miami River since the Second Seminole War of 1835–42.

Natural river
In its original natural state, the river started at rapids formed by water from the Everglades flowing over a rocky ledge four miles (6.4 km) from its mouth. Frederick H. Gerdes of the United States Coast Survey reported in 1849 that "[f]rom the upper falls to near its entrance into Key Biscayne Bay… water in the Glades was 6 ft above low tide." The rapids were removed when the Miami Canal was dredged in an attempt to drain the wetland.

The river divided into a North Fork and a South Fork about three miles (4.8 km) above its mouth. Each fork extended only one mile (1.6 km) to rapids marking the edge of the Everglades. The North Fork had a greater flow and higher drop over its rapids. One- and one-half miles (2.4 km) above the mouth of the river there was a tributary on the north side, called Wagner Creek, which was about two miles (3.2 km) long. The Miami River was also fed by several springs, including some in the bed of the river. The river's flow was variable and in times of drought the river did not flow.

History
The earliest known inhabitants of the area around the Miami River were the Tequestas. Their major town at the time of first European contact was on the north bank of the river near the mouth. Before the intensive development of Miami in the 20th century, mounds built by the Tequesta were located along the river. Spanish missions were briefly established beside the river in 1567–70 and in 1743, but the area was abandoned when Spain turned Florida over to Britain in 1765.

The area around the Miami River attracted settlers throughout the 19th century with the major exception of the years of the Seminole Wars, but those years had little effect on the river. The United States Army attempted to dig a channel through the sandbar at the mouth of the river in 1856, but stopped when it was decided that Fort Dallas would not be made permanent.

Dredging and pollution
Modification of the river began in earnest with the arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway in Miami in 1896. There was much dredging and filling along the river. The rapids at the head of the South Fork were removed in 1908. From 1909 to 1912, the Miami Canal was dug, bypassing the rapids at the head of the North Fork. The canal was dammed off from the river for most of the construction period. When the canal was opened to the river in March 1912, large amounts of Everglades muck and finely ground stone from the dredging were washed down the river, silting it. As a result, the lower river had to be dredged three times in two years.

Dredging of the river and of the canals connecting to the river continued into the 1930s. Deepening the Miami River (and other streams and canals draining into Biscayne Bay), as well as the drainage of the Everglades, which was a major purpose of the dredging, led to saltwater intrusion in the area, ultimately forcing the abandonment of drinking water wells on several occasions. By the 1940s, dams were being installed on the canals leading into the Miami River to prevent salt water from traveling inland.

The Miami River also became polluted. In 1897, Miami's first sewer line started emptying directly into the river. By the 1950s, 29 sewers were dumping untreated sewage into the river. Miami-Dade County constructed a sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key in the 1950s and connected sewer lines to it, routing the raw sewage away from the river.

Artifact discoveries
At a site next to the river, archeologists in 2023 discovered numerous artifacts, "dating back to the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years ago." The discoveries included prehistoric tools and preserved animals and plants. Development of a residential property was put on hold during legal proceedings to determine if the site would be preserved as a protected archeological site.

Commercial use
The Miami River is likely the shortest working river in the United States. The Center for Urban & Environmental Solutions reported in 2008: "Waterborne commerce through the Miami River port doubled between an annual level of about 250,000 short tons in the early 1970s to about 500,000 in the early years of the new century. Foreign trade accounts for most of the commerce through the Miami River Port. Exports dominate the Port's commerce, accounting for over 75 percent of the total. In the 1970s, exports had averaged 56 percent of the total. Most of the Miami River's foreign trade is with the nearby countries of the Caribbean, especially the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Bahamas. This reflects the suitability of the Miami River for shallow draft vessels which serve the many shallow draft ports in the Caribbean."

The Miami River has long been home to many small cargo terminals where smaller ships (up to about 230 ft in length) call to load cargo, most of which is destined for ports in the Bahamas and various Caribbean nations. It is also an area where all manner of contraband—illegal drugs, undocumented immigrants—have been discharged into the United States. Because of continuing efforts by the United States Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), DEA and other agencies, the illicit trade has been minimized in recent years.

Although the part of the river from Northwest 36th Street to its mouth is still polluted, this has been mitigated considerably by rigid enforcement of both international and U.S. laws regarding discharge of oil and sewage by ships, as well as of laws addressing industrial dumping. The muddy bottom, however, is still reported to contain undesirable substances in significant quantities.

In years past, many vessels docked in the river at the ends of their last voyages were abandoned and sank alongside the docks, creating eyesores and hazards for navigation. Those derelicts have been removed.

Invoking the authority of Port State Control, the U.S. Coast Guard strongly enforces the numerous international and national regulations regarding safety equipment, construction, maintenance and manning of ships entering all U.S. ports, including the Miami River, and virtually eliminating the many dangerously substandard vessels that had sailed from the U.S. in previous years.

In recent years, realizing they had common interests, various business entities along the river formed the Miami River Marine Group. The group works closely with local law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Coast Guard, ICE, and others to maintain clear channels of communication and cooperation. It now acts much as one port with numerous port facilities and support entities such as agents, surveyors, consultants, naval architects and engineers, and ship and machinery repair businesses.

Many of the ships sailing from the Miami River carry cargo to ports in Haiti including Port-au-Prince, Miragoâne, Cap-Haïtien, Port-de-Paix, Saint-Marc, Gonaïves, and Jacmel. Their cargo typically consist of dry foodstuffs such as beans and rice, canned goods, clothing, household goods and appliances, and used cars, trucks, and buses.

In times past, some of the cargo terminals on the river were areas of lawlessness. Law enforcement and regulatory agencies have eliminated most of that sort of activity. When the International Ship and Port Security Code and the U.S. Maritime Transportation Act of 2002 came into force (and in the prior runup) on July 1, 2004, most opportunities for crime were eliminated.

Redevelopment

Some of the terminals and other business related to cargo shipping on the "lower end" of the river near downtown Miami have been eliminated or moved farther upstream because of illicit shipping activities. The "lower end" of the river has been the subject of much renovation and building of high rise offices, hotels, and living structures.

A number of residential and mixed-use projects have been constructed along the Miami River. They include Latitude on the River, Mint at Riverfront, Neo Vertika, River Oaks Marina and Tower, and Terrazas Miami.

Starting in the 2000s, two urban greenway projects known as the Miami Riverwalk and Miami River Greenway were started.

title: Miami River (Florida)


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Northwest Region (Cameroon)

The Northwest Region, or North-West Region (Région du Nord-Ouest) is one of ten regions of Cameroon. Its regional capital is Bamenda. The Northwest Region was part of the Southern Cameroons, found in the western highlands of Cameroon. It is bordered to the southwest by the Southwest Region, to the south by the West Region, to the east by the Adamawa Region, and to the north by Nigeria. Various Ambazonian nationalist and separatist factions regard the region as being distinct as a polity from Cameroon.

In 1919, the Northwest Region became solely administered by the United Kingdom. In 1961, the region joined the Cameroon. Separatists from the Ambazonian administration regard both the Nord-Ouest (Northwest) and Sud-Ouest (Southwest) regions as being constituent components of their envisaged breakaway state.

History
The origins of the region are linked to the settlement of the Tikar people who joined the Bamoun Kingdom, in the 1700s. In 1884, the region was colonized by Germany under the regime of the protectorate until 1916 when it became a condominium administered jointly by the United Kingdom and the France. In 1919, the administration of the North West region, as part of Southern Cameroons became solely British. In 1961, the region joined Cameroon, under the 1961 British Cameroons referendum.

At the end of 2017, a Ambazonian separatist movement in the two English-speaking regions of North West and South West began a wave of violence terrorists affecting soldiers, police, business leaders and workers. Separatist activists are trying in particular to prevent children from returning to school. Between 2016 and 2019, terrorists reportedly ransacked, destroyed or burned down more than 174 schools.

Administration
The Northwest Region (known before 2008 as the Northwest Province) is the third most populated province in Cameroon. It has one major metropolitan city, Bamenda, with several other smaller towns such as Wum, Kumbo, Mbengwi, Ndop, Nkambé, Batibo, Bambui, Bafut and Oshie. The province saw an increase in its population from approximately 1.2 million in 1987 to 1.8 million in 2010. The population density of 99.12 people per square kilometer is higher than the national average of 22.6. The provincial urban growth rate is 7.95%, higher than the national average of 5.6%, while the rural growth rate, at 1.16%, is equal to the national rate. In 2001, according to the Statistical Provincial Services of the North-West Province, the population of the province is young, with over 62% of its residents being less than 20 years old. Therefore, the dependency rate in the province is high, particularly in the rural areas.

Like other regions in Cameroon, the Northwest Region is made up of administrative divisions. The province was created in 1972 with five divisions or departments: Bui, Donga-Mantung, Menchum, Mezam, and Momo. Today, it has seven divisions, the additions being Boyo, which was carved out of the Menchum division, and Ngo-Ketunjia or Ngoketunjia, split off from the Mezam division. Each division is further subdivided, with thirty-one total subdivisions in the Northwest Province. The basic unit of local government is the council, and there are thirty-two councils in the region.

Population
The Northwest Region has many ethnic groups, including immigrants from other regions and countries. Nigeria is well represented, as it borders the region to both the north and the northwest. The native population comprises a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups. The main ethnic groups are of Tikar origin: Tikari, Widikum, Fulani, and Moghamo. The most widely spoken languages in the province include Mungaka, Limbum, Yamba, spoken by the Yamba people also of the Donga Mantung Division; Bafmen, Oku, Lamnso, Ngemba, Pidgin English, Balikumbat, Papiakum, Moghamo, and Nkom. During the colonial period, administrative boundaries were created which cut across ethnic groups and cultures. As a result, parts of some ethnic groups now lie in different divisions and provinces, which is believed to have led to several land conflicts.

In the provinces, the social organization recognizes a chief as its head, also called the Fon. The Fons, who in their tribal area may be more influential than the official administrative authorities, are considered the living representative of the tribal ancestors.

Politics
The Northwest is a stronghold of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) which is one of the main opposition parties of Cameroon. Some Northwesterners feel completely marginalized by the government. There is also a secessionist movement, the SCNC (Southern Cameroon's National Council) whose goal is to secede from Cameroon and form a republic consisting of the English-speaking regions. Much of the SCNC's influence exists in the Northwest. In 2008, the President of the Republic of Cameroon, Paul Biya, signed decrees abolishing "Provinces" and replacing them with "Regions". The Northwest Province subsequently became the Northwest Region.

Natural attractions
The Northwest region has unique attractions, including the second highest mountain in West Africa, Mount Oku. It is home to birds such as the Bannerman's turaco, which is unique to this region. There are also many crater lakes such as Lake Oku, Lake Awing, and Lake Nyos. The largest remaining mountain forest in the Northwest Region is the Kilum-Ijim Forest. Menchum Falls, and Abbi Falls in the Mbengwi Division, are also located here.

title: Northwest Region (Cameroon)