Knox County, Tennessee

Knox County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Knoxville
Year Organized: 1792
Square Miles: 508

Court House:

400 Main Street
City County Building
Knoxville, TN 37902-2406

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Henry Knox (1750-1806), American Revolutionary War artillery commander, one of the founders of the Society of the Cincinnati and first US secretary of war.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Knox County

Created 1792 from Greene and Hawkins counties; named in honor of Henry Knox (1750-1806), American Revolutionary War artillery commander, one of the founders of the Society of the Cincinnati and first US secretary of war.

Knox County was formed in 1792 from Greene and Hawkins counties
(Ordinance by William Blount, Governor of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, 1792).

In 1786 James White built a fort five miles below the junction of the French Broad and Holston Rivers on the southernmost edge of frontier settlement in present-day East Tennessee. William Blount, governor of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, selected the site of James White's Fort as the territorial capital in 1791 and gave it the name Knoxville in honor of Revolutionary War hero General Henry Knox (1750-1806), who served as the first U.S. secretary of war from 1785 to 1794.

Knox County, also named for Henry Knox, was created from parts of Greene and Hawkins Counties on June 11, 1792, by Governor Blount and has the distinction of being one of only eight counties created during territorial administration. Knoxville has served as the county seat of Knox County from the date of the county's creation. Portions of Knox County were later removed to create Blount County (1795), Anderson County (1801), Roane County (1801), and Union County (1850). Knox County currently contains 509 square miles and lies at the geographical center of the Great Valley of East Tennessee. The Tennessee River originates near the center of the county from the union of the Holston and French Broad Rivers.

Find more from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: KNOX COUNTY

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 526 square miles (1,362 km²), of which, 508 square miles (1,317 km²) of it is land and 17 square miles (45 km²) of it (3.29%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Union County (north)
Grainger County (northeast)
Jefferson County (east)
Sevier County (southeast)
Blount County (south)
Loudon County (southwest)
Roane County (west)
Anderson County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Farragut	town	Incorporated Area
- Knoxville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."