The One, The Only: Kingsport!

 

There's Only One Kingsport

Fun Fest is winding up for this year. 

It is the time of year when Kingsport puffs out its chest and proclaims:

We're number one!

But you know what? We are number one.

Kingsport is unique, singular, one of a kind.

Just look us up on the Internet. Or in a gazetteer.

The most famous Bristol in America isn’t the one that straddles the Tennessee-Virginia border. It’s the one in Connecticut, home to ESPN.

Johnson City shares its renown with the Johnson City in Texas, immortalized by its native son, President Lyndon Johnson, who located his Texas White House there.

There are more famous Morristown’s than the one down the road - the one in New Jersey to start with.

But the most famous Kingsport in America? Take a bow. It’s us.

Maybe it’s because of Fun Fest or native son John Palmer or Pal’s.

But I think there’s probably an even simpler explanation.

We’re it.

There is no other Kingsport in the U.S. of A.

Nein, nada.

Which strikes me as one of the stranger oddities of the gazetteer. King is such a common name - the 30th most common name in America according to the U.S. Census Bureau with slightly more than a half million people claiming it as their surname. Since numerous towns derive their name from their shipping port origins, you would think there’d be a bounty of Kingsport’s across this land. But there’s not.

There is a Kingsport in Nova Scotia, Canada.

And there is a fictional Kingsport created by horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft and called by him the “City in the Mist.”

But in the real Great 48 no one else has our name.

How do I know? I didn’t until John Reed told me. It had never occurred to me that there wasn’t another Kingsport.

How did John know? “I was a lad and the Times-News published an article about how there's only one Kingsport.  As I recall, they verified that fact in those pre-Internet days by mailing a postcard from somewhere up north to Somebody, Street Address, Kingsport - no state, and of course no zip code in those days.  This was back when ‘the mail must go through’ was the Post Office motto, and somebody looked up ‘Kingsport’ and added Tennessee to the address.  Amazing, huh?”

You can confirm our unique status by going on the Internet and typing “Kingsport” into a search engine. Eventually you will get to Kingsport, Canada and Kingsport, City in the Mist, and even vintage Kingsport brand shirts. But you have to go deep into the search pages.  

Why folks named King are so un-nautical and didn’t found more ports is another question, one that I don’t have the answer to.

Bennett & Edwards ad from 1949