Bristol

In September 1780, patriot militia gathered at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River, then marched over the Blue Ridge Mountains and defeated the British at the Battle of Kings Mountain — a victory the record calls critical for the Patriot cause. The route they walked passed through what is now four states, and 200 years later that corridor was designated the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, the first National Historic Trail in the eastern United States. The Great Cherokee War and Trading Path had already been moving people through this same corner of Tennessee long before any of that, and the Great Stage Road carried travelers — Andrew Jackson among them — through Kingsport well into the next century. This region didn't become significant because roads were built here. Roads were built here because the land already demanded movement, and the people who came through left enough behind to make it worth retracing.

The state line between Virginia and Tennessee doesn't run behind Bristol — it runs through it, down the center of State Street, splitting the asphalt into two jurisdictions that share one downtown. The Historic State Street District covers about 23 acres and 106 buildings, roughly 80 percent of them contributing masonry structures dating from around 1890 to 1952, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. A landmark bridge marking the border went up in 1910 and earned its own National Register listing in 1988. That same year, Bristol Gas and Electric erected a sign on that seam to advertise the city; its original slogan was PUSH! — THAT'S BRISTOL. A 1921 contest replaced it with A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE, lit by 1,332 bulbs, and nobody has changed it since. Two governments, one street, one sign — the division is the point.

In 1927, a record producer set up equipment in a historic building on State Street — the road that is itself the Tennessee-Virginia state line — and recorded 76 songs by 19 artists over a matter of days. Those sessions, including the commercial debuts of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, are what Congress recognized in 1998 as the birthplace of country music. The Carter Family themselves came from Hiltons, Virginia, thirty-five minutes out, where a daughter of A.P. and Sara Carter later established the Carter Fold — a rustic shed running weekly traditional music nights, the stage where Johnny Cash gave his final public performance. Back in Bristol, a Smithsonian-affiliated museum now holds the full story, and each year a three-day festival draws tens of thousands to the same downtown street where the recording happened. The state line still cuts down the middle of the asphalt. The music came from both sides.