| Joppa, Tennessee | |
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| — Community — | |
| Joppa United Methodist Church shadowed by Joppa (Clinch) Mountain | |
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Joppa, Tennessee
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| Coordinates: | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Tennessee |
| County | Grainger |
| Elevation | 965 ft (294 m) |
| Time zone | Eastern (EST) (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
| ZIP code | 37861 |
| Area code(s) | 865 |
Joppa is an unincorporated community in rural west-central Grainger County, Tennessee, United States that rests below Joppa Mountain, a subrange of the 150 mile (240 km) long Clinch Mountain Ridge. It is part of the Morristown, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area.
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It's situated along the Federal Road (now US-11W), which connected New Orleans and Virginia. The road intersected the Old Kentucky Road (now US-25E) at Bean Station, just east of Rutledge.[1]
During the U.S. Civil War, guerilla warfare largely paralyzed Grainger County. Confederate General James Longstreet, who had earlier failed to wrest Knoxville from Union forces, on December 14, 1863, in what became known as the Battle of Bean's Station, attacked a Union detachment that had been pursuing him. The Confederates failed to exploit the element of surprise, and the Union forces were able to hold out until reinforcements arrived. While Longstreet was victorious, Union forces were able to retreat through Joppa en route to fortifications at Blaine, and Longstreet subsequently abandoned the assault and continued eastward to Russellville.[2]
Cherokee Lake, created by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1941 with the completion of Cherokee Dam, is located just southeast of Joppa.
Hang Gliding from Joppa (Clinch) Mountain was (and still is) the goal of many hang gliding enthusiasts around the world according to the president of one of the largest hang gliding associations in the United States. Hang gliding on Joppa (Clinch) Mountain started in the mid-1970s and enjoyed considerable notoriety until the late 1980s. The 1979 USHPA regional competition was held on Joppa (Clinch) Mountain, and is also the site of the Tennessee Flex Wing Free Flight Record of 68.3 miles by Ellis Newkirk. The Locals describe the weekends around the Joppa & Powder Springs communities as being full of activities with spectators lined along U.S. Route 11W (Rutledge Pike) & TN State Route 131 as hang gliders would launch from Buzzard Rock, on the Joppa Mountain summit, and glide over the Poor, Richland, and Clinch Valleys landing at various local landing zones or destinations as far away as Virginia, Kentucky, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Joppa is located at (36.279991, -83.518008).[3]. The community is situated along Richland Valley, a narrow valley that stretches for some 35 miles (56 km) along the southern base of the Clinch Mountain Ridge between Blaine and Rutledge. Richland Creek traverses most of the valley en route to its confluence along the Cherokee Lake impoundment of the Holston River, approximately 14 miles (23 km) downstream from Joppa.
The Joppa community encompasses an area of about 12 square miles (31 km2) that runs roughly from the top of the Clinch Mountain Ridge just southwest of where Joppa Mountain Road crosses at Powder Spring Gap, then runs about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) northeasterly along the ridge to just above where the intersection of Corbin Lake and Poor Valley Roads meet between the Poor Valley Knobs and then turns south and runs roughly 2.5 miles (4.0 km) across U.S. Route 11W to the top of the Richland Knobs near Owl Hole Gap Road. From there, it runs another 4.5 miles (7.2 km) southwesterly along the top of the Richland Knobs.
Joppa is centered around Joppa Elementary School located at the junction of U.S. Route 11W, which connects the community to Kingsport to the east and Knoxville to the west, and Joppa Mountain Road, which traverses the Clinch Mountain Ridge via the Powder Spring Gap to the Powder Springs Community to the northwest. Starting from the Clinch Mountain Ridge's southern terminus at Signal Point peak near Blaine Tennessee, Joppa Mountain Road is the first of only five transportation crossings from southwest to northeast along its entire 150-mile (240 km) length.
Geology
Even by a geologist's standards, the Appalachians are old mountains: The bedrock was formed 1 billion years ago and the mountains are 500 million years old, 10 times older and once taller than the Rockies, Sierras, Andes, and Himalayas. They have been created, worn down, and created again as a result of tectonic and weathering forces. Continental drift, a phenomenon that continues on earth's surface today, has played a major role.
The legacy of tectonic events in East Tennessee created the mountainous physiographic province known as the Valley and Ridge, within which Joppa, TN is located. The Valley and Ridge takes its name from its long ridges and valleys oriented in a northeast-southwest direction. This topography was shaped by folding and faulting that occurred during the Paleozoic Era. Great force from the east, possibly from northern Africa ramming into eastern North America, rippled the landscape like a rug pushed against a wall from one side. Then erosion set in, shaping more resistant rock into ridges and cutting valleys into weaker ones. The area is dominated by dolomite and highly erodible limestone, making caves numerous. The region has great habitat diversity and supports an especially diverse fish fauna, including the Upper Clinch River, which holds one of the most diverse fish faunas in North America.[4]
A small playa (flat) area below the Joppa Mountain summit called Chestnut Flat was once home to a large population of American Chestnut trees. The pathogenic fungus is the causal agent of Chestnut blight, a devastating disease of the American chestnut tree that caused a mass extinction by 1940 of this once plentiful tree from its historic range in the south east United States.
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