A Unique Map of Kingsport in 1916

When George L. Carter send out his emissaries – his lawyer, his secretary, his employees – in 1905 to buy land options on all the farms in the Kingsport area, not all the property owners were interested in selling. The most important holdout was George Childress, whose farm covered much of what would later be called Gibsontown.

He did eventually sell but not to Carter’s company, Kingsport Improvement, but to Globe Realty & Auction Company of Roanoke, Virginia.

Globe thought it was sitting on a goldmine, a large tract of land near downtown Kingsport, the largest piece that wasn’t owned by Kingsport Improvement.

In 1916 Globe began trying to sell lots in this tract, which it had named Spring Park Heights.

In a full-page ad in the Johnson City Staff, Globe explained the name.

“First because there is a very large spring on the property. Second because we will donate a piece of land surrounding this spring for a park for the use of the purchasers of these lots.  Third because it is well elevated, being a gradual slope on a small ridge and running up to the highest point in the residential section of this Southern metropolis.”

No one locally had ever called it that. It was known as the Childress place.

Accompanying the ad was a large “sketch” of downtown Kingsport in 1916.

The map was not drawn by a surveyor or an engineer but, apparently, by a commercial artist, perhaps an employee of Knoxville Engraving, which had made the newspaper plate for the ad.

It’s not to scale – its purpose was to sell lots. But it is a unique view of Kingsport as it was beginning to boom.

The ad called Kingsport “the Wonder City” which is “destined to be one of the largest cities in the South, as there are five more manufacturing plants under construction.”

It’s not even called a map in the ad but a “sketch” showing the location of Spring Park Heights, which, the ad promised, would have 200 full-size lots, “with broad streets and alleys…making it in every respect a high-class proposition.”

I think we all know how that turned out.

About ten years ago Kevin Jones, who grew up in Spring Park Heights, told me the modern boundaries:

"It runs from Watauga Street, Campbell, Elizabeth to Globe Street.”

Here is that unique “sketch” of 1916 Kingsport:

Here is the complete ad for Spring Park Heights: