The Mighty Metro Pulse Collection of Awesome Knoxville Lists

5 Reasons Why We Did a Lists Issue

5. We have amassed more knowledge about Knoxville than any single human brain can physically hold, and it must be shared with the general populace.

4. People love lists!

3. The editor has finally run out of ideas and badly needs a vacation.

2. Couldn’t get an interview with Hector.

1. The machine must be fed.

4 Most Annoying Billboards Around Town

4. “That ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ thing...I meant it. -God”

—Good to know the omnipotent creator sounds like Chandler from Friends.

3. “Stephen A Burroughs, Your Car Wreck Attorney.”

—If you haven’t noticed, this guy is everywhere. His strategy seems to be to distract drivers with his neatly manicured beard and mesmerizing gaze so that they crash and thus require his services.

2. “Arby’s, Ahead on Right”

—Self-explanatory

1. “If he loves you, he’ll put a ring on it.” ­­

—Wait a sec. It? What are we talking about here?

57 Unlikely* People Who Found Reason to Visit Knoxville At One Time Or Another

Ingrid Bergman

Frederick Douglass

John Phillip Sousa

Louis-Philippe, duc d’Orleans (future Citizen-King of France)

Ulysses S. Grant

Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Viet Nam

Jean-Paul Sartre

John Barrymore

Babe Ruth

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Admiral George Dewey

Ernest Hemingway

Buffalo Bill

Pete Best

Richard Nixon

William Faulkner

Desi Arnaz

Carrie Nation

Teddy Roosevelt

Cab Calloway

Duke Ellington

Amelia Earhart

Merv Griffin

William Tecumseh Sherman

Will Rogers

W.E.B. Dubois

Sarah Bernhardt

Ronald Reagan

Rutherford B. Hayes

Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx

William McKinley

David Ben-Gurion

Anna Pavlova

Glenn Miller

William Jennings Bryan (he visited both before and after his death)

Fanny Bryce

Queen Juliana of the Netherlands

Confederate spy Belle Boyd

Mick Jagger

Guy Lombardo

J.C. Penney

Jack Dempsey

Jawaharlal Nehru

Eugene V. Debs

Lily Langtry

Viscount du Chateaubriand

Peter Fonda

Norman Mailer

Lou Gehrig

Tony Perkins

Clarence Darrow

Paul McCartney

Tom Thumb

Frederick Law Olmsted

* Note, re our definition of Unlikely: Well-traveled Southerners like Louis Armstrong, Elvis, and Martin Luther King are considered Likely.

4 Places You Can Buy a Full House

Time Warp Tea Room

Mary’s Tamales

The Original Freeze-o

Cardin’s Drive-In

3 Names Often Mispronounced

Krutch Park

Neyland Stadium

Ijams Nature Center

4 Names Often Misspelled

Sequoyah Hills

Civic Coliseum

McCarty Holsaple McCarty

Metro Pulse

4 Names Often Mishyphenated

McGhee Tyson Airport

Lawson McGhee Library

News Sentinel

Most names of architectural firms

3 Fictional Names for Knoxville in Novels

Kingsville (in the Seas of God, 1915, by Anne Armstrong)

Cherokee (in Bijou, 1974, by David Madden)

Delisleville (in In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim, 1899, by Frances Hodgson Burnett)

4 Movies with Scenes Set in Knoxville

A Woman In Hiding (with Howard Duff and Ida Lupino, 1950)

Kissin’ Cousins (with Elvis Presley, 1964)

The FBI Story (with James Stewart and Vera Miles—she plays a Knoxville librarian, 1959)

All the Way Home (with Robert Preston, 1963)

21 Pikes

(Many cities don’t have even one!)

Ball Camp Pike

Boyd’s Bridge Pike

Central Avenue Pike

Dry Gap Pike

Jacksboro Pike

Kingston Pike

Knoxville Pike (in Maryville)

Lonsdale Pike

Martin Mill Pike

Maryville Pike

Maynardville Pike

Middlebrook Pike

Millertown Pike

Old Kingston Pike

Pike Road

Rutledge Pike

Scottish Pike

Sevierville Pike

Tazewell Pike

Washington Pike

Woodlawn Pike

5 Cities That Should Envy Us More

5. Morristown

4. Clinton

3. Sevierville

2. Atlanta

1. Friendsville

6 People Whose Names Most Knoxvillians Recognize Without Knowing What For

Carolyn P. Brown

J.E. “Buck” Karnes

Bob Gray

Bob Kirby

Ula Love Doughty

Frank McClung

5 Things Named for a Familiar Pun

Hard Knox Tattoos, on Sutherland

Hard Knox Pizza, in Western Plaza

Hard Knox Records, recording studio in West Knoxville

Hard Knox Roller Girls

Hard Knoxville Review, literary journal edited by R.B. Morris in the 1980s

7 Imaginary West Knoxville Subdivisions

1. Fartington Hills

2. Snooty Meadows

3. Peeswallow Hollow

4. Labia Downs

5. Sprawlymore Gables

6. Lucifer Glen

7. Sputterbutt Lane

14 Tourist Attractions, Once Advertised by City Promoters, That No Longer Exist Here

Fort Sanders, the actual fort, site of veterans’ reunions into the 1890s

Gov. and Sen. William “Parson” Brownlow’s downtown home, visited by several presidents

Lyons View, as a public vista

Staub’s Opera House

Luttrell Park in South Knoxville near the Gay Street Bridge

Turner Park in North Knoxville

The Old Capitol, aka Anthoney’s Tavern, reputed to be Tennessee’s first capitol building

Chisholm’s Tavern, 1790s boarding house near the river

Victorian home of Gov. and Sen. Robert Love Taylor at Fourth and Gill

The grave of Gov. and Sen. Robert Love Taylor in Old Gray, since removed

The cross-river cable car at Cherokee Bluffs

Fountainhead Hotel in Fountain City

Whittle Springs Hotel near Fountain City

Cal Johnson’s Raceway in East Knoxville

The Liberal Arts Building, remnant of the 1913 Conservation Exposition at Chilhowee Park

The Birthplace of Farragut, log cabin on display at Chilhowee Park

2 Boulevards That Aren’t Really Boulevards

Lake Loudoun Boulevard

Forest Hills Boulevard

3 Awkwardly Named Streets

Bearden Street, in North Knoxville

Farragut Avenue, in North Knoxville

Concord Street, in central Knoxville

2 Bronze Statues Downtown of Men Holding Babies

Fireman’s statue at fire hall on Summit Hill

Rotary Club statue of vaccination hero in Krutch Park

7 Famous Beasts Associated With Knoxville

Maud, the Mule who was hoisted to the top of the Burwell Building as the superstructure was completed, ca. 1908

The White Mule, the circus attraction whose ca. 1867 death was blamed for a series of fires on the 400 block of Gay Street in the 1890s and early 1900s

Winkle family ox who won a race with an automobile around Market Square in 1907

Foolish Pleasure, the race horse owned by Knoxvillian John L. Greer, who won the 1975 Kentucky Derby

Runaway horse who killed Peter Staub, former mayor and developer of Knoxville’s first major auditorium, in 1904

Perez Dickinson’s giant pig

The monkey who was once a mascot of the Knoxville Fire Department, about 100 years ago

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