Tennessee Tourism

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  • Tennessee Tourism Guide - Check Discounts at all Nashville and Memphis Hotels. Get Recommendations on What to Do and What to See in Tennessee.
    A shallow rectangle, only one hundred miles from north to south, the State of TENNESSEE stretches 460 miles from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains, and divides into three distinct regions. The marshy western third of Tennessee occupies a low plateau edging down toward the Mississippi. Only in the far south west corner do the hills rise high enough to permit a sizeable riverside settlement, the exhilarating port of Memphis Tennessee. The largest city in Tennessee, Memphis is a magnet for music fans, as the birthplace of urban blues and longtime home of Elvis Presley. The beautiful plantation homes and tidy old towns of middle Tennessee's rolling farmland reflect the relaxed lifestyle of its pioneers: right in the heart of this is Nashville Tennessee, still the country music capital, despite new competition from Branson Missouri and Myrtle Beach. The mountainous east shares its top attraction with North Carolina, the peaks, streams and meadows of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

    Check Out Our Tennessee Travel Deals and Lodging Discounts at all Nashville Hotels and Memphis Hotels.

    The first white settlers of Tennessee, most of them English Protestants, arrived from across the mountains in the 1770's to settle in the hills and hollows of the Appalachians. Initially relations with the Cherokee were good. However, demand for land increased, and confrontations throughout the state culminated in 1838 with the forced removal of the Indians on the Trail of Tears. One of the main congressional opponents of this process was Davy Crockett , familiar from legend as the heavy-drinking hunter in a coonskin cap. When Civil War came, the plantation owners of the west maneuvered Tennessee into the Confederacy, against the wishes of the non slaveholding small hold farmers in the east. The last state to secede became the primary battlefield in the west, the site of 424 battles and skirmishes.

    Despite economic progress to rival any in the country, soil erosion and farm mechanization led to a mass migration to the cities in the years before World War I. The fundamentalist beliefs of these transplanted hill dwellers whose folk and fiddle music served to spark Nashville's country scene, influenced a prohibition movement that kept all of Tennessee bone dry until 1939, and still sees a majority of counties forbidding the sale of alcohol. The New Deal of the 1930's brought momentous change. In particular, the Tennessee Valley Authority , created in 1933, harnessed the flood-prone Tennessee River, providing much welcomed jobs and cheap power, and ignited the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy.
     
  • Nashville Tennessee Tourism
    Set amidst the gentle hills and fertile farmlands of central Tennessee, NASHVILLE attracts seven million people each year, a mixture of devoted fans and the just plain curious, to immerse themselves in country music . They come to enjoy themselves, and the city makes sure that they do, offering not just the relatively mainstream Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry , but all the wonders of "Tacksville." To make the most of this facet of Nashville, you need to abandon any idea of detachment, and get out there among the nightspots and gift emporia, joining the quest for souvenir T-shirts, Stetsons, rattlesnake belts and photos of your favorite star.

    However, there is a real city beneath the rhinestone glitter. Nashville has been the leading settlement in middle Tennessee since Fort Nashborough was established in 1779. State capital since 1843, it is now the financial and insurance center of the mid-South, as well as a fast-growing manufacturing base. Giant Nissan and Saturn motor plants have been attracted to its immediate hinterland, and rapid growth since World War II has transformed a once-compact city into a sprawling conurbation stretching out in all directions along the undulating roads, here known as pikes .

    For all its blue collar "Nash Vegas" image, Nashville Tennessee has maintained a strong reputation for learning since planter times, and is home to sixteen higher education establishments, including Vanderbilt University and the renowned black colleges of Fisk University and Meharry Medical School. The city likes to see itself as the "Athens of the South" - and, endearingly, has built a replica of the Parthenon to bolster its claim. Even at night, Nashville offers more than country music, with enough going on to satisfy most tastes. It has also boosted its image by attracting an NFL team the Tennessee Oilers and NHL side the Nashville Predators here.

    The other conspicuous element in Nashville's make-up is religion . There are over seven hundred churches, more per capita than anywhere else in the country. But what really earns it the tag of "Protestant Vatican" is the proliferation of colleges for training preachers and missionaries, church administrative offices and Bible-publishing plants.

    The City of Nashville
    Downtown Nashville looks much like any other regional business center, dominated by office blocks and parking lots, and dotted here and there with major flagship structures like the gigantic Nashville Arena sports and entertainment complex at Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and the Country Music Hall of Fame at Fifth and Demonbreun streets. It's perfectly possible to spend a busy day in Nashville without coming into contact with country music. A good starting point is Riverfront Park at First Street and Broadway, a thin stretch of grass and terracing dipping down to the Cumberland River . A replica of the wooden Fort Nashborough (Tues-Sun 9am-5pm; free) stands on a promontory above the river as a monument to the city's founders of 1779. A few blocks away, the worthy Tennessee State Museum at 505 Deaderick St (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; free) is strongest on the Civil War, highlighting the hardships of the ill-clad, ill-fed soldiers, of whom 23,000 out of 77,000 died at Shiloh alone. Other displays in this huge space focus on frontier life and on black Tennesseans, looking at slavery, Reconstruction, the founding of the Ku Klux Klan and the civil rights movement.

    Marking downtown's northern boundary at Sixth and Charlotte avenues, the resplendent Tennessee State Capitol (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm; free), modeled on an Ionic temple, looks out across the city from its hilltop perch. Early in the twentieth century, this area was yet another "Hell's Half Acre," notorious for its drinking holes, gambling clubs, sex shows and dope dens; it's considerably tamer now, housing hotels and offices.

    At the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville's "Athens of the South" exhibit featured a full-size wood-and-plaster replica of the Parthenon, which proved so popular with Nashville residents that the present permanent structure, in the middle of Centennial Park southwest of downtown at West End and 25th avenues, was built in 1931. This impressive edifice - familiar to moviegoers from the finale of Robert Altman's not-always-flattering Nashville - is now home to Nashville's premier art museum (Tues-Sat 9am-4.30pm; April-Sept also Sun 12.30-4.30pm; $3.50). The lower level contains American paintings; the upper hall is dominated by a 42ft replica of Phidias's statue of Athena.

    Just across West End Avenue, weather-beaten Gothic structures sit alongside more modern utilitarian buildings on the campus of prestigious Vanderbilt University . This bastion of conservatism was one of the very few colleges to witness student demonstrations in support of US involvement in Vietnam. Nearby Fisk University is one of the nation's oldest black colleges, and on campus is the excellent Van Vechten Gallery , at Jackson Street and D.B. Todd Boulevard (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 1-5pm; closed Sun in summer; donation). In addition to works by Picasso, Cézanne and Renoir, and a wide array of pieces by Georgia O'Keeffe, there are changing exhibits, many of them with an African-American theme.

    Of the many buildings erected by Nashville's antebellum elite, none was more elaborate than the Belmont Mansion , a mile southeast of the Parthenon at 1900 Belmont Blvd (June-Aug Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 1pm-4pm; Sept-May Tues-Sat 10am-4pm; $7). This 36-room Italianate 1850 villa looks out across ornamented gardens that once kept bears and a lake stocked with alligators.
     
  • Memphis Tennessee
    The cotton trading capital of the Delta, MEMPHIS TENNESSEE, perched above the Mississippi 200 miles west of Nashville and 300 miles south of St Louis, is one of the great destinations of the South. Visitors come from all over the world to celebrate the city that virtually invented blues, soul and rock n roll, as well as to chow down in the incomparable barbecue capital of America. A visit to Memphis Tennessee, the home of the Sun and Stax record labels, with its frequent festivals and vigorous nightlife, feels like an invitation to share in a genuine and enduring local culture.

    Culturally and geographically, Memphis TN has more in common with the deltalands of Mississippi and Arkansas than with the rest of Tennessee. Founded in 1819 and named for Egypt's ancient Nile capital, its fortunes rose and fell with cotton . The Confederate defeat that ended the slave trade briefly plunged it into economic chaos, and severe yellow fever epidemics didn't help, but thanks to its potential for river and rail transportation Memphis soon bounced back. The nation's second largest inland port became a major stopping-off point for black migrants escaping the poverty of the Delta, and many stayed, significantly shaping the city's identity.

    For a couple of decades after the 1968 assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., Memphis Tennessee tedered on the brink of terminal decline, with downtown hit by a massive case of white flight. In the past decade, however, Nashville has regenerated itself yet again, its new self confidence typified by the extraordinary 321ft stainless steel Pyramid that now dominates the riverfront skyline. The famous blues corridor of Beale Street is booming once more, perhaps a little ersatz but always entertaining, while Elvis Presley's Graceland - a refreshing change from the usual gracious southern home, provides an intimate and exuberant glimpse of Memphis's most famous son.

    Memphis Tourism - The City
    Downtown Memphis Tennessee has in the last few years started to come back to life, at the cost of losing some of its old cotton era buildings. The central streets parallel to the river are steadily acquiring new hotels, restaurants and stores. Beale Street on the southern fringes of downtown is the liveliest area to roam around, with the world famous Sun Studio nearby and the Civil Rights Museum just south. The huge Mud Island on the river itself merits half a day, while Graceland the home of Elvis Presley, ten miles out, should by no means be missed.

     Tennessee Tourism, Nashville Hotels, Memphis Hotels and destination guides
    Nashville Hotels Nashville Hotels Downtown Nashville Hotels Downtown Nashville Hotels Hotels in Downtown Nashville Nashville Hotels Hotels in Downtown Nashville Nashville Hotels Opryland Hotel Nashville Opryland Hotel Nashville Tennessee Downtown Nashville Hotels Nashville Hotels Downtown Nashville Hotels Downtown Nashville Hotels Tennessee Tourism Memphis Hotels Memphis Airport Hotels Hotels in Memphis Tennessee Memphis Tennessee Hotels Hotels in Memphis TN Memphis Lodging Memphis TN Hotels Airport Inn Memphis Amerisuites Memphis Hotel Baymont Inn and Suites Quality Suites Wolfchase Clarion Hotel Hawthorne Suites Hilton Memphis Guest Inn Memphis Hotel Madison Hotel Memphis Marriott Memphis Radisson Hotel Memphis Radisson Memphis TN Wellesley Inn and Suites

     


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