Tennessee (redirected from Tenesse)

Tennessee, state, United States

Tennessee (tĕn`əsē', tĕn'əsē`), state in the south-central United States. It is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia (N), North Carolina (E), Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (S), and, across the Mississippi R., Arkansas and Missouri (W).

Facts and Figures

Area, 42,244 sq mi (109,412 sq km). Pop. (2000) 5,689,283, a 16.7% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Nashville. Largest city, Memphis. Statehood, June 1, 1796 (16th state). Highest pt., Clingmans Dome, 6,643 ft (2,026 m); lowest pt., Mississippi River, 182 ft (56 m). Nickname, Volunteer State. Motto, Agriculture and Commerce. State bird, mockingbird. State flower, iris. State tree, tulip poplar. Abbr., Tenn.; TN

Geography

The state has three sharply defined regions: East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee. In East Tennessee the Great Smoky Mts., Cumberland Plateau, and the narrow river valleys and heavily forested foothills generally restrict farming there to the subsistence level; but this region has two of the state's most industrialized cities, Chattanooga (fourth largest) and Knoxville (third largest). Middle Tennessee is hemmed in by the Tennessee River, which flows SW through East Tennessee into Alabama, looping back up into West Tennessee in its circuitous route to the Ohio. Gently rolling, fertile, bluegrass country, it is ideal for livestock raising and dairy farming. Middle Tennessee is still noted for its fine horses and mules, e.g., the Tennessee walking horse.

West Tennessee, with its rich river-bottom lands, on which most of the state's cotton is grown, lies between the Tennessee and the Mississippi rivers. The average annual rainfall ranges from 40 to 50 in. (101.6–127 cm), and the climate ranges from humid continental in the north of the state to humid subtropical in the south; the rigors of a northern winter usually affect only the most mountainous parts of East Tennessee.

Twenty-three state parks, covering some 132,000 acres (53,420 hectares) as well as parts of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee National Forest, and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park are in Tennessee. Sportsmen and visitors are attracted to Reelfoot Lake, originally formed by an earthquake; stumps and other remains of a once dense forest, together with the lotus bed covering the shallow waters, give the lake an eerie beauty.

The state also has many sites of historic interest, including the Hermitage, home of Andrew Jackson; the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site; Shiloh National Military Park; and Fort Donelson and Stones River national battlefields. Part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is also in Tennessee (see National Parks and Monuments, table). The Natchez Trace National Parkway generally follows the old Natchez Trace. Nashville is the capital and the second largest city. The largest city is Memphis.

Economy

Although Tennessee is now primarily industrial, with most of its people residing in urban areas, many Tennesseans still derive their livelihood from the land. The state's leading crops are cotton, soybeans, and tobacco; cattle, dairy products, and hogs are also principal farm commodities. Tennessee's leading mineral, in dollar value, is stone; zinc ranks second (Tennessee leads the nation in its production). Industry is being continually diversified; the state's leading manufactures are chemicals and related products, foods, electrical machinery, primary metals, automobiles, textiles and apparel, and stone, clay, and glass items. Aluminum production has been important since World War I.

Tennessee has long been a major tourist destination, owing largely to its beautiful scenery. Many lakes were built here by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Army Corps of Engineers. The TVA also developed the Land Between the Lakes, an enormous Kentucky-Tennessee recreation area. Visitors are also drawn by Tennessee's famed music capitals, the country-music mecca of Nashville and the blues and jazz hub of Memphis.

Government, Politics, and Higher Education

Tennessee has had three constitutions, drafted in 1796, 1834, and the present one in 1870. Its executive branch is headed by a governor, elected for a four-year term. The state's legislature has a senate with 33 members and a house with 99. The state elects two senators and nine representatives to the U.S. Congress and has 11 electoral votes.

Democrats dominated Tennessee politics from the Civil War onward, but their power has declined in recent years. Republican Don Sundquist, elected governor in 1994, was reelected in 1998. In 2002 a Democrat, Phil Bredesen, was elected to the office; he was reelected in 2006.

Among the state's many institutions of higher learning are the Univ. of Tennessee, chiefly at Knoxville; East Tennessee State Univ., at Johnson City; Fisk Univ. and Vanderbilt Univ., at Nashville; Tennessee Technological Univ., at Cookeville; Univ. of Memphis, at Memphis; and the Univ. of the South, at Sewanee.

History

Early History

W Tennessee abounds with artifacts of the prehistoric Mound Builders, who were the earliest inhabitants of the area. Cherokee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Creek were in the region when it was first visited by a European expedition under De Soto in 1540. French explorers came down the Mississippi River, claiming both sides for France, and c.1682 La Salle built Fort Prudhomme, possibly on the site of present-day Memphis. The French established additional trading posts in the area, but they suffered continual harassment from the Chickasaw. Meanwhile, English fur traders and long hunters (frontiersmen who spent long periods hunting in this area) came over the mountains from the Carolinas and Virginia, prevailed over the Cherokee, and made ineffectual the French claims to the area, which in any event was lost (1763) by the French in the French and Indian Wars.

The first permanent settlement was made (1769) in the Watauga River valley of E Tennessee by Virginians; they were soon joined by North Carolinians, including perhaps a few refugees of the Regulator movement. In 1772 these hardy settlers living beyond the frontier formed the Watauga Association, the first attempt at government in Tennessee, and in 1777, at their request, North Carolina organized those settlements into Washington co.; Jonesboro, the county seat and oldest town in Tennessee, was founded two years later.

The American Revolution and Statehood

In the American Revolution, John Sevier was among the notable Tennesseans who served with distinction. When, after the war, North Carolina ceded its western lands to the federal government, the E Tennessee settlers, incensed at being transferred without their consent, formed a short-lived independent government (1784–88) under Sevier (see Franklin, State of). The cession was reenacted in 1789, and in 1790 the federal government created the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio (Southwest Territory), with William Blount as governor. This act disposed of various schemes to place the area under the control of Spanish Louisiana. In 1796 Tennessee, with substantially its present boundaries, was admitted to the Union as a slave state, with its capital at Knoxville. It was the first state to be carved out of national territory.

Tennessee's constitution, which provided for universal male suffrage (that is, including free blacks), was described by Thomas Jefferson as "the least imperfect and most republican" of any state. Armed with land grants awarded for service in the American Revolution, veterans and speculators (who had acquired the grants from veterans, sometimes fraudulently) swarmed in from the Carolinas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and even from New England via such overland routes as the Wilderness Road and Cumberland Gap. Others poled keelboats from the Ohio up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.

The Early Nineteenth Century

For the most part a rough and ready people, numbering over 100,000 by 1800, the settlers of Tennessee were nevertheless strongly influenced by the Great Revival, a wave of religious hysteria that swept the state that year. The virtues and vices of their strongly egalitarian society were exemplified by Andrew Jackson, who was prominent in the faction-ridden politics of Tennessee. By 1829 when Jackson became president, the state was prospering. The first steamboat had reached Nashville in 1819, the year in which Memphis, soon to become the metropolis of a fast-growing cotton kingdom, was platted.

Internal improvement projects—canals and then railroads—were pushed, and a new, smaller wave of immigrants (predominantly Irish and German) arrived after the Cherokee and the Chickasaw were banished West in the late 1830s. Insatiable land hunger, the spirit of adventure, and personal considerations carried many white Tennesseans beyond the state; among them were Gov. Samuel Houston and David Crockett, both of whom had been conspicuous in the fight for Texan independence. A decade later the response of Tennessee to the request for volunteers to fight in the Mexican War was so overwhelming that it has since been known as the Volunteer State. Tennessee's James K. Polk, a Jackson protégé, was the President of the United States during that war.

The Civil War and Reconstruction

Although slaves were numerous in W Tennessee, and to a lesser extent in Middle Tennessee, and free blacks were subjected to a series of discriminatory regulations, the state was pro-Union; it voted in the presidential election of 1860 for its own John Bell, candidate of the moderate Constitutional Union party. Secession was rejected in a popular referendum on Feb. 9, 1861. However, after the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, the pro-Confederate element, led by Gov. Isham G. Harris, canvassed the state, and on June 8, 1861, a second referendum approved secession by a two-thirds majority. The one third opposed represented mainly E Tennessee, where slavery was a negligible factor and where Andrew Johnson (then U.S. Senator) and William G. Brownlow had strengthened the natural Union loyalties of the people.

In the Civil War Tennessee was, after Virginia, the biggest and bloodiest battleground. The rivers served as Union invasion routes. Nashville was occupied by Gen. D. C. Buell in Feb., 1862, after the victories of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on the lower Tennessee and Cumberland rivers (see Fort Henry and Fort Donelson). In April one of the bloodiest battles of the war was fought near the Mississippi state line (see Shiloh, battle of), and Memphis fell to a Union fleet in June. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, defeated at Perryville, Ky. in Oct., 1862, retreated further in Jan., 1863, after the battle of Murfreesboro, and Grant, successful in the Vicksburg campaign, completely routed him (Nov., 1863) in the Chattanooga campaign.

The Confederates did manage to hold on to Knoxville until Sept., 1863, and their cavalry, particularly the forces of Gen. N. B. Forrest and Gen. J. H. Morgan, remained active. An army under Gen. J. B. Hood made a last desperate attempt to regain the state late in 1864 but was defeated at Franklin (Nov. 30) and annihilated at Nashville (Dec. 15–16) by federal troops under G. H. Thomas. The Union military government that had been set up under Andrew Johnson in 1862 was succeeded in Apr., 1865, by a civil government headed by Brownlow. An amendment to the state constitution of 1834 freed the slaves, and, with ex-Confederates disfranchised and radical Republicans in control, the state was readmitted to the Union in Mar., 1866.

As the first Confederate state to be readmitted, Tennessee was spared the worst aspects of Congressional Reconstruction, but the postwar years were nonetheless bitter. The organization formed largely to reestablish "white supremacy" in the South, the Ku Klux Klan, was founded (1866) in Tennessee, at Pulaski. The situation improved after Brownlow left (1869) the governorship for the U.S. Senate, to which the state also returned (1875) Andrew Johnson in vindication of his record as Lincoln's successor in the presidency. Brownlow's successor, Gov. De Witt C. Senter, although nominally a Republican, encouraged the calling of a new state constitutional convention. In 1870 the delegates drew up a constitution that rejected the reforms of the radical Republicans; African-American suffrage was limited by means of the poll tax and former Confederates were reenfranchised.

Industrialization, Prohibition, and the Scopes Trial

Economically, the farm-tenancy system, which had replaced the plantation system, brought much misery; industry, however, made advances after the Civil War. The iron- and steelworks of E Tennessee were unable to meet the competition of Birmingham, Ala., but coal mining continued and textile production increased. The use of convict labor in the mines precipitated the state's first major labor disturbance (1891–92), but not until 1936 was the convict-leasing system abolished.

A statewide Prohibition bill (not repealed until 1939) was passed over a governor's veto in 1909, and this question so divided the Democratic party that in 1910 a Republican was elected governor for the first time since 1880. In World War I the thousands of Tennessean volunteers in the U.S. armed forces included Sgt. Alvin C. York, who became one of the nation's most highly publicized heroes. In 1925 the state attracted international attention with the famous Scopes trial at Dayton. The fact that the state law banning the teaching of evolution was not repealed until 1967 is indicative of the strong role that Protestant fundamentalism played in the lives of many Tennesseans. Its further influence was reflected in the passing of a 1973 bill prohibiting the teaching of evolution as a fact rather than a theory.

The TVA and an Expanded Economy

One of the most important events in Tennessee since the Civil War was the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933. Although opposed by private power companies, the TVA succeeded in providing hydroelectric power cheaply and in abundance, bringing modern comforts to thousands. Over the years its programs expanded and were supplemented by other projects for water-resources development. Most important, the TVA was chiefly responsible for the basic change in the state's economy from agriculture to industry and for the significant growth and diversification of industry, especially during and after World War II. The TVA also came to be associated with atomic energy, for it provides the power for Oak Ridge, one of the sources of production of the constituents for the first atomic bombs.

Since the late 1970s there has been significant growth in the service, trade, and finance sectors of the state economy and Tennessee has been very aggressive in attracting new industry. Many of the firms that have been setting up new factories and distribution centers in Tennessee come from America's northern industrial states and from Japan.

Bibliography

See S. J. Folmsbee et al., History of Tennessee (1961, repr. 1969); J. Clark, Tennessee Hill Folk (1972); Federal Writers' Project, Tennessee: A Guide to the State (1939, repr. 1972); R. E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History (2d ed. 1981); J. Cimprich, Slavery's End in Tennessee, Eighteen Sixty-One to Eighteen Sixty-Five (1985); R. E. Corlew, Tennessee: The Volunteer State: An Illustrated History (1989).

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Tennessee, river, United States

Tennessee, river, c.650 mi (1,050 km) long, the principal tributary of the Ohio River. It is formed by the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers near Knoxville, Tenn., and follows a U-shaped course to enter the Ohio River at Paducah, Ky. Its drainage basin covers c.41,000 sq mi (106,200 sq km) and includes parts of seven states. Navigation was long impeded by variations in channel depths and by rapids, such as Muscle Shoals. However, the Tennessee Valley Authority (est. 1933) has converted the river into a chain of lakes held back by nine major dams (Kentucky, Pickwick Landing, Wilson, Wheeler, Guntersville, Nickajack, Chickamauga, Watts Bar, and Fort Loudoun). As a result of these improvements, river traffic increased; flooding was controlled; a water-oriented recreation industry was established; and hydroelectric power generated at the dams attracted new industries to the region. The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, opened in 1985, links the Tennessee with the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Tombigbee and Mobile rivers. During the Civil War, the Tennessee River was a prime approach for a Union invasion of the South; several great battles were fought there (see Fort Henry; Shiloh, battle of; Chattanooga campaign).

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Tennessee

State (pop., 2000: 5,689,283), southeast-central U.S. It occupies 42,144 sq mi (109,153 sq km); its capital is Nashville. It is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Alabama and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west. The Great Smoky Mountains edge the eastern part of the state, while the Mississippi River is on its western boundary. The Tennessee River valley dominates much of the state, and the Tennessee Valley Authority is the nation's largest electric-power generating system. Tennessee has a moderate climate; about half of it is forested. American Indians, including Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Shawnee, inhabited the region when Spanish, French, and English explorers visited it in the 16th–17th centuries. It was included in the British charter of Carolina and in the French Louisiana claim and was ceded to Great Britain after the French and Indian War. The first permanent settlement was made c. 1770. It was part of North Carolina until 1785, when the area's settlers broke away and formed the free state of Franklin. North Carolina relinquished its claim in 1789, and Tennessee became the 16th U.S. state in 1796. In 1861 it seceded from the Union; the hard-fought American Civil War battles of Shiloh, Chattanooga, Stones River, and Nashville occurred there. In 1866 it was the first state readmitted to the Union. During the Reconstruction era, blacks lost what little power they had gained. After World War II Tennessee became a testing ground for those involved in the civil rights movement. The state's economy is based on manufacturing.

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Tennessee

1. a state of the E central US: consists of a plain in the west, rising to the Appalachians and the Cumberland Plateau in the east. Capital: Nashville. Pop.: 5 841 748 (2003 est.). Area: 109 412 sq. km (42 244 sq. miles)

2. a river in the E central US, flowing southwest from E Tennessee into N Alabama, then west and north to the Ohio River at Paducah: the longest tributary of the Ohio; includes a series of dams and reservoirs under the Tennessee Valley Authority. Length: 1049 km (652 miles)

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Tennessee State Information

Phone: (615) 741-3011
www.tennessee.gov


Area (sq mi): 42143.27 (land 41217.12; water 926.15). Pop per sq mi: 144.70.
Pop 2005: 5,962,959. State rank: 0. Pop change: 2000-20005 4.80%; 1990-2000 16.70%. Pop 2000: 5,689,283 (White 79.20%; Black or African American 16.40%; Hispanic or Latino 2.20%; Asian 1.00%; Other 2.40%). Foreign born: 2.80%. Median age: 35.90.
Income 2000: per capita $19,393; median household $36,360; Pop below poverty level: 13.50%. *Personal per capita income 2000-2003: $26,097-$28,641.
Unemployment 2004: 5.50%. Change from 2000: 1.50%. Median travel time to work: 24.50 minutes. Working outside county of residence: 26.60%.

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List of Tennessee counties:

Anderson County Bedford County Benton County Bledsoe County Blount County Bradley County Campbell County Cannon County Carroll County Carter County Cheatham County Chester County Claiborne County Clay County Cocke County Coffee County Crockett County Cumberland County Davidson County Decatur County DeKalb County Dickson County Dyer County Fayette County Fentress County Franklin County Gibson County Giles County Grainger County Greene County Grundy County Hamblen County

Hamilton County Hancock County Hardeman County Hardin County Hawkins County Haywood County Henderson County Henry County Hickman County Houston County Humphreys County Jackson County Jefferson County Johnson County Knox County Lake County Lauderdale County Lawrence County Lewis County Lincoln County Loudon County Macon County Madison County Marion County Marshall County Maury County McMinn County McNairy County Meigs County Monroe County Montgomery County Moore County

Morgan County Obion County Overton County Perry County Pickett County Polk County Putnam County Rhea County Roane County Robertson County Rutherford County Scott County Sequatchie County Sevier County Shelby County Smith County Stewart County Sullivan County Sumner County Tipton County Trousdale County Unicoi County Union County Van Buren County Warren County Washington County Wayne County Weakley County White County Williamson County Wilson County

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Tennessee Parks

• US National Parks

  Andrew Johnson National Historic Site Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area Fort Donelson National Battlefield

  Great Smoky Mountains National Park Obed Wild & Scenic River Shiloh National Military Park

  Stones River National Battlefield

• Urban Parks

  Audubon Park Centennial Park Edwin Warner Park

  Martin Luther King-Riverside Park Overton Park Percy Warner Park

  Shelby Farms Park

• State Parks

  Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park Big Cypress Tree State Park Big Hill Pond State Park Big Ridge State Park Bledsoe Creek State Park Booker T. Washington State Park Burgess Falls State Natural Area Cedars of Lebanon State Park Chickasaw State Park Cordell Hull Birthplace State Park Cove Lake State Park Cumberland Mountain State Park David Crockett State Park Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park Dunbar Cave State Natural Area Edgar Evins State Park Fall Creek Falls State Resort Park Fort Loudoun State Historic Park

  Fort Pillow State Historic Park Frozen Head State Natural Area Harpeth River State Park Harrison Bay State Park Henry Horton State Resort Park Hiwassee/Ocoee Scenic River State Park Indian Mountain State Park Johnsonville State Historic Park Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Park Long Hunter State Park Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park Montgomery Bell State Resort Park Mousetail Landing State Park Natchez Trace State Park Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park Norris Dam State Resort Park Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park Panther Creek State Park

  Paris Landing State Park Pickett State Park Pickwick Landing State Resort Park Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park Port Royal State Historic Park Radnor Lake State Park Red Clay State Historic Park Reelfoot Lake State Park Roan Mountain State Park Rock Island State Park Sergeant Alvin C. York State Historic Park South Cumberland Recreation Area Standing Stone State Park Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park T. O. Fuller State Park Tims Ford State Park Warriors' Path State Park

• Parks and Conservation-Related Organizations - US

  American Association for State & Local History (AASLH)

  Ducks Unlimited Inc

  Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

• National Wildlife Refuges

  Chickasaw National Wildlife Refuge Cross Creeks National Wildlife Refuge Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge

  Lake Isom National Wildlife Refuge Lower Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge

  Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge

• National Scenic Byways

  Cherohala Skyway - Tennessee

• National Heritage Areas

  Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area

• National Forests

  Cherokee National Forest

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Tennessee

Sixteenth state; admitted on June 1, 1796 (seceded on June 8, 1861, and was readmitted on July 24, 1866)

In 1929, the state legislature designated June 1 as Statehood Day in Tennessee.

State capital: Nashville Nicknames: The Volunteer State; The Big Bend State; The

Mother of Southwestern Statesmen State motto: Agriculture and Commerce State agricultural insect: Honeybee (Apis mellifera) State amphibian: Tennessee cave salamander (Gyrinophilu

palleucus) State animal: Raccoon (Procyon lotor) State aviation hall of fame: Tennessee Aviation Hall of

Fame State bird: Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) State butterfly: Zebra swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus) State commercial fish: Channel catfish (Ictalurus lacustris);

game fish: Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) State declamation: “I am Tennessee” State flower: cultivated: Purple iris (Genus Iridaceae); wild:

Passion flower (Passiflora incarnata) State folk dance: Square dance State fossil: Pterotrigonia (Scabrotrigonia) thoracica State fruit: Tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum) State game bird: Bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) State gem: Tennessee pearl State horse: Tennessee Walking Horse State insects: Ladybug (Hippodamia convergens); firefly

(Photinus pyralls) State jamboree and crafts festival: Smithville Fiddlers’­Jamboree and Crafts Festival

State paintings: Tennessee Treasures; Tennessee Treasures Too State poem: “Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee” State reptile: Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina) State rocks: Limestone; agate State slogan: Tennessee—America at Its Best

State songs: “When It’s Iris Time in Tennessee”; “Tennessee Waltz”; “My Homeland, Tennessee”; “My Tennessee”; “Rocky Top”; “Tennessee”; “The Pride of Tennessee”

State tree: Tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) State wild animal: Raccoon (Procyon lotor)

More about state symbols at:

tennessee.gov/sos/symbols/

More about the state at:

www.state.tn.us/sos/bluebook/

SOURCES:

AmerBkDays-2000, p. 413 AnnivHol-2000, p. 94 DictDays-1988, p. 113

STATE OFFICES:

State web site: www.tennessee.gov

Office of the Governor State Capitol 1st Fl Nashville, TN 37243 615-741-2001 fax: 615-532-9711 www.tennessee.gov/governor

Secretary of State State Capitol 1st Fl Nashville, TN 37243 615-741-2819 fax: 615-532-9547 www.state.tn.us/sos

Tennessee State Library & Archives 403 7th Ave N Nashville , TN 37243 615-741-2764 fax: 615-741-6471 state.tn.us/tsla

Legal Holidays:

Good Friday

Apr 22, 2011; Apr 6, 2012; Mar 29, 2013; Apr 18, 2014; Apr 3, 2015

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Tennessee 

a state in the southern USA. Area, 109,400 sq km. Population, 4.1 million (1974; 58.8 percent urban). The capital is Nashville. Other important cities are Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga.

The eastern part of the state is occupied by the Appalachian Mountains, and the western part by the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The climate is subtropical continental, with average January temperatures of 3.5°–5°C and average July temperatures of 25°C. Annual precipitation is 1,100–1,200 mm. The main rivers are the Tennessee and the Cumberland. The soils are mainly of the brown forest type. Deciduous trees, such as oak, hickory, and tulip tree, grow on the mountain slopes. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is located in Tennessee.

Tennessee is an industrial-agrarian state. The Tennessee River valley has a complex of hydroelectric, thermal, and nuclear power plants, with a rated power of 13 gigawatts (GW; 1974); the hydroelectric power plants have a capacity of 2 GW. Among the leading industries are the chemical industry, which produces fertilizers and synthetic fibers, the nuclear-related industries at Oak Ridge, and nonferrous metallurgy, represented by the smelting of aluminum in Alcoa. Other industries include machine building, represented by the manufacture of electrical equipment, agricultural equipment, and motor vehicles, as well as woodworking, textiles, food processing, and printing. Manufacturing employs 522,000 persons (1973); 7,000 are engaged in the mining of coal, phosphorites, and zinc and the quarrying of marble.

In agriculture, two-thirds of the commodity production is provided by stock raising; the livestock population numbers 2.7 million head of cattle and 900,000 hogs (1972). Tennessee’s main crops are tobacco and soybeans. Other crops include corn, wheat, cotton, and forage grasses. There is shipping on the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers.

IU. A. KOLOSOVA

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Tennessee 

a river in the eastern USA; a left tributary of the Ohio River (Mississippi River basin) and the Ohio’s largest tributary.

The Tennessee River is formed by the confluence near Knoxville of the Holston and French Broad rivers, which flow down the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. Its length from the confluence is 1,050 km (from the source of the Holston, 1,470 km). The Tennessee drains an area of 104,000 sq km. High water occurs in late winter and in spring, and low water in summer. The mean flow rate at the mouth is 1,800 cu m per sec.

The flow of the Tennessee is almost completely regulated by a system of multipurpose reservoirs. Nine of the reservoirs —including the Kentucky Reservoir, the largest at 1,100 sq km—are on the Tennessee itself, and 22 are on the river’s tributaries. A system of bypass canals (near the rapids at Chattanooga, Tenn., and Florence, Ala.) and locks makes the Tennessee navigable for its entire length, from the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers. The total generating capacity of the hydroelectric power plants in the Tennessee River basin is approximately 4 gigawatts. The cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tenn., and Florence, Ala., are on the Tennessee River.