Rogersville on the Rise

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Once a part of the Wilderness Road, Rogersville, Tennessee, has put its long history to beautiful use.

Rogersville’s Main Street is an impressive place, and it’s easy to get lost in the architectural/historic majesty of the place. Walk it, and you’ll see centuries-old, Federal-style buildings on every corner, a number of them holding “oldest (or second-oldest) in Tennessee” records. The Courthouse. The Post Office. The Masonic Lodge. The Hale Springs Inn.

Settled in 1775, Rogersville is the second-oldest town in the state. Joseph Rogers bought a 281-acre tract of land with an abundantly flowing spring from the Crockett (yes, as in Davy Crockett) family, after original settlers David and Elizabeth Crockett (Davy’s grandparents) were massacred. The Crocketts are memorialized in beautiful Crockett Spring Park and Arboretum, and they’re buried in nearby Rogers Cemetery.

Melissa Nelson is the director of the Rogersville Heritage Association, housed (along with the Tennessee Newspaper and Printing Museum) in the restored 1890 Southern Railway Depot. “We push history in Rogersville—and we work to restore and preserve—because we learn from history,” she says. “We acknowledge the problems of the past. Here in Rogersville, Black history is our history.”

The Price Public Community Center and Swift Museum is proof positive of this. Originally a two-room cabin, Price Public School educated Black children for nearly a century. Today the school is a community center and museum. And the Swift Memorial College/Institute opened in Rogersville in 1883, its enrollment swelling in 1901 when nearby Maryville College was forced by the State of Tennessee to expel its Black students.  Swift Memorial College closed in 1955 after Black students were again allowed in Maryville in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Raising money through strategic grant writing and substantial donations, The Rogersville Heritage Association owns Crockett Spring Park, Rogers Tavern and the stately 200-year-old Hale Springs Inn, where Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson all stayed.

Main Street storefronts are nearly all full, and restaurants abound—everything from the longstanding Oh Henry’s homecooking (“Breakfast served all day”) to The Hollywood Hillbilly (yes, the owner moved to Rogersville from Hollywood, California).Traffic flows smoothly on well-maintained streets and restored sidewalks. Wayfinding signs lead you to side streets with quirky shops like George Webb’s Tennessee Books and Autographs and Bull Babies restaurant (known for its huge portions of southern comfort food and weekend “brunch and beer”).

“Last year, we saw 23 new businesses open that created 74 new jobs—with over $1.2 million in public and private capital investment,” says Nancy Barker, director of the Rogersville/Hawkins County Chamber of Commerce and Rogersville Main Street program.

“What’s especially exciting is that folks are coming here and buying entire buildings, rather than just renting the downstairs storefront. We’re getting grants to work on the building facades as they renovate the interiors.”

Barker is rightly proud of the steady stream of Main Street celebrations in her hometown. Monthly cruise-ins May through October. The Junk and Jam Vintage Fair. Last year, 40,000 people came to the longstanding mid-October Heritage Days Festival, with over 120 juried crafts vendors, Civil War Cavalry reenactments and Appalachian music, dancing and food.     

It’s worth noting that Rogersville accomplishes all of these public celebrations with the strategic help of a program aimed at engaging young residents. The Heritage Lites Youth Leadership program is overseen by the Heritage Association, but also does projects for the chamber of commerce. Young participants, celebrating the past as they build skills for the future? Vitality personified.

All of this energy, in a small town of 4,700 people…off major interstate routes…tucked away in the “secondary ridges” of the Smokies and the long shadow of Dollywood and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Nowhere is the spirit of Rogersville more apparent than in Coffee at the Kyle, where, at 7:30 on a weekday morning, the coffee flows nonstop, and the yeasty goodness of made-from-scratch breakfasts fills the place. Housed in a large brick house built by Rogersville founder Joseph Rogers that was used as the Confederate Headquarters during the Civil War because it faces south, Coffee at the Kyle is owned by Stephanie Lord.

“We always thought this town was underrated,” she says with a smile. “My husband and I opened Red Dog on Main five years ago, and this coffee shop in 2016—we wanted to help Main Street recover.”

Lord believes that hospitality builds community—and to watch the steady stream of customers and groups meeting in adjoining sitting rooms, you know that’s bottom-line true.

I’ve sometimes wondered if towns with deep roots wrapped around long-ago stories—and a lot of “oldest” claims—can move forward with grace as the calendar pages flip into new decades and centuries.

In Rogersville, I learned first-hand that with careful attention to and restoration of what was, the future can rise with a beautiful new energy. In Rogersville, it’s not either-or…it’s both-and.

‘Cradle of Tennessee Journalism’

Located in the restored 1890 Southern Railway depot, the Newspaper and Printing Museum pays homage to the first newspaper printed in Tennessee. According to an account in the 2023 Hawkins  County Guidebook, the story goes something like this:

In 1791, George Roulstone, the first printer to enter the state of Tennessee, took his press apart in Fayetteville, North Carolina, packed it on horses’ backs or in wagons, and trekked over the Blue Ridge Mountains in to the Holston Valley, where Kingsport now stands. There… he loaded it on a flat boat and floated it down to Rogersville, where he set it up and started printing the Knoxville Gazette, the first piece of printing ever attempted in Tennessee.

Though Roulstone left Rogersville the next year and took the paper to the newly established city of Kingsport, Rogersville rightly claims the first newspaper printing in Tennessee. Its Newspaper and Printing Museum contains a replica of Roulstone’s 1791 newpaper, contents of other early print shops and the last linotype machine used to set type for a newspaper in the state.

The story above first appeared in our July / August 2024 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!