Handsomely rugged and rough-hewn, Tennessee reveals itself most characteristically in a 480-mile stretch from Mountain City at its northeastern boundary, southwest to Memphis and the Mississippi River, with its twisting western shore. In a place of individualistic, strong-minded people, history and legend blend into folklore based on the feats of Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, and Sam Houston. It is a state of mountain ballads and big-city ballet, of water-powered mills and atomic energy plants.

The state's economy and its basic patterns of life and leisure were electrified in the 1930s by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Depression-born, often denounced, and often praised grand-scale public power, flood control, and navigation project. TVA harnessed rampaging rivers, saved cities from the annual plague of floods, created a broad system for navigation, and produced inexpensive power and a treasury of recreational facilities. TVA altered the mainstream of the state's economy, achieving a dramatic switch from agriculture to industry. Cheap power, of course, sparked that revolution. Today, Tennessee has manufacturing payrolls in excess of farm income. Chemicals, textiles, foods, apparel, tourism, healthcare, printing and publishing, metalworking, and lumber products are its chief industries.

Farms and forests still produce more than 50 different crops, but the emphasis is changing from cotton and tobacco to livestock. With more than 200 species of trees, Tennessee is the nation's hardwood producing center. Mining is also a leading industry in Tennessee, with limestone the major product. The state also ranks high in the production of zinc, pyrite, ball clay, phosphate rock, and marble.

In 1541, it is believed, the explorer de Soto planted the flag of Spain on the banks of the Mississippi near what is now Memphis. Although French traders explored the Tennessee Valley, it was their English counterparts who came over the mountain ranges, settling among the Cherokee and establishing a claim to the area. By the end of the 17th century, the Tennessee region was a territory of North Carolina. With the construction of Fort Loudoun (1756), the first Anglo-American fort garrisoned west of the Alleghenies, settlement began. The first permanent colonies were established near the Watauga River in 1769 and 1771 and are known as the Watauga settlements.

The free-spirited settlers in the outlying regions found themselves far from the seat of their formal government in eastern North Carolina. Dissatisfied and insecure, they formed the independent state of Franklin in 1784. But formal recognition of the independent state was never to come. After four chaotic years, the federal government took over and in 1790 established "The Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio." Tennessee was admitted to the Union six years later. Among the first representatives it sent to Washington was a raw backwoodsman named Andrew Jackson.

During the War of 1812, Tennessee riflemen volunteered in such great numbers that Tennessee was henceforth called the "Volunteer State," and Andrew Jackson emerged from the war a national hero.

Although there was strong abolitionist sentiment in parts of the state, Tennessee finally seceded in 1861 and became a battleground; some of the bloodiest battles of the war, including Shiloh, Stones River, Missionary Ridge, Fort Donelson, and the Battle of Franklin, were fought within the state's boundaries. In 1866, shortly after former Tennessee governor Andrew Johnson became president, the state was accepted back into the Union.