Z. Heraclitus Knox

Bermuda, Hercules, Virtue, Mabel, Kangaroo: those were all rural communities in Knox County, 125 years ago. How were they named? Search me.

Street names are a murky subject. The developers or city officials who choose street names aren’t obliged to explain the process of nomenclature in the public record at the time, and rarely volunteer to do so.

So who's the McClung behind the now burned-out McClung Warehouses?

The house at 9320 Kingston Pike is indeed antebellum. It is in fact one of the oldest houses in West Knoxville. Formally known as the Walker-Sherrill House (for those with more breath and better memory for names, the Kennedy-Baker-Walker-Sherrill House), ...

Dear Doc Knox: We have 11th through 22nd Streets in Fort Sanders, and I remember 10th Street before the World’s Fair. But were there ever First through Ninth Streets?

The world may have forgotten—football-happy Tennessee certainly has—but Knoxville played a role in the history of Southern baseball. For at least 60 years, baseball was Knoxville’s favorite spectator sport.

Dear Dr. Knox: I cannot find a decent biography of John Williams, Jr. (1818-1881), the son of Colonel John Williams. Can you help?

Before Nashville had its first recording studio, before Roy Acuff learned to play fiddle, before the landmark Bristol recordings, there was George Reneau, of Knoxville, Tenn. He was making records, and selling them, as one of America’s first professional country ...

Two centuries ago, the block of Gay northeast of the intersection of Gay and Union offered a dropoff way down toward First Creek’s floodplain. The bank was so steep it was considered impossible to develop commercially by the architecture and ...

Question: A downtown we first experienced as one of the most lifeless had turned into a great little city. It begs the question, have “native” attitudes changed? Or did it take an influx of non-natives to create what’s becoming a ...