Blue Ridge Country January/February 2021 - 28

MOUNTAIN CURiOS

Where Blue Ridge States

INTERLOCK

A Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia, cemetery may present the ultimate in knitted-together states: Legend has
it that some are buried with their heads in Virginia and their feet in Tennessee.

erchants in the two-state
city of Bristol praise the
Geico gecko for pumping
up tourism in the statestraddling community a
few years back.
The tiny green advertising icon passes beneath the famous
Bristol Sign, and dances back and forth
over the brass plates at the center of State
Street, the mid-city thoroughfare along
the Tennessee-Virginia state line.
" On this side of the road, it's Virginia, " the gecko says in the commercial.
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

The GEICO gecko was the star of
an ad that played on the twostate nature of Bristol, TennesseeVirginia's State Street, the center of
which is the border between the two
states.

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

By JOE TENNIS

" And on this side of the road, it's Tennessee, " as he tries to determine whether
this place should be called " Virginessee "
or " Tenneginia. "
Fact is, Bristol is two distinct cities-
with the larger in Tennessee and the
smaller in Virginia. Still, it seems like
one city, which shares the same library,
newspaper, hospital and chamber of
commerce.
It is also the home of the two-state
East Hill Cemetery, where, it's said, some
folks have their heads buried in Virginia
and their feet buried in Tennessee!

Want more state-straddling stories?
* South Holston Lake: Just a few miles
east of Bristol, South Holston Lake spans
24 miles of the channel of the South Fork
of the Holston River. And where it connects Tennessee and Virginia, you'll find
a state-line sign on a rock at Washington
County Park.
That's Washington County, Virginia,
by the way. But that park stretches so far
south-into the lake-that it actually occupies part of Sullivan County, Tennessee.
Another curiosity: Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest oversees the national
forest along this lake-even the treepacked and sandy shores inside Virginia!
* New River: Kayakers better pack a
fishing license for both Alleghany County, North Carolina, and Grayson County,
Virginia, when venturing on the New
River as the river zigzags across the state
border several times.
* Cumberland Gap National Historical
Park: It takes three states to contain the
thousands of acres occupied by the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park: Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Here, you'll find a Tri-State Marker,
where Virginia stretches as far west as
Detroit. But, the only way you can get to
those final few feet of the Old Dominion
is to walk a trail-through Kentucky!
Just west of that marker, you'll find
the Cumberland Gap Tunnel on U.S. 25E,
where you enter from Tennessee and exit
into Kentucky-about a mile later.
The tunnel opened in 1996 for safety's
sake-and so park officials could restore
the actual Cumberland Gap to how it
looked in famed frontiersman Daniel
Boone's day of the 1770s.

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Blue Ridge Country January/February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country January/February 2021