Mountain City, Tennessee

Drive east, not west

Most days at the townhouse, when you need something — groceries, gas, a meal you did not cook — you drive west. TN-67 west into Butler for the IGA, US-321 west to Elizabethton for the Food City and the hospital, all the way to Johnson City if you need a real hardware store or a major chain.

Mountain City is the other direction. Fifteen miles east on US-421, climbing the whole way. By the time you crest into the Mountain City valley you have gained about five hundred feet of elevation — the town sits at 2,418 feet, which makes it the highest incorporated city in Tennessee. Butler is at roughly 1,950. You feel the climb in the engine and in the air; mornings are noticeably cooler in Mountain City than at the lake.

The fact that there is a real town up here at all is something of an accident of history. The land was hard to reach from Elizabethton, the original Carter County seat, which is why Johnson County split off in 1836 and built a new county seat on land bought from a settler named William Vaught. They called it Taylorsville at first, for a Colonel James Taylor. The name held for almost fifty years until 1885, when a local Congressman named Roderick R. Butler — the same Butler our town is named for — pushed for a name change to reflect what was geographically obvious. Mountain City has been Mountain City ever since.

The square

The Johnson County Courthouse sits at 222 West Main Street, a modest brick building on a small downtown square. Around it you will find the things a real county seat needs and not much more: a couple of law offices, a bank, the post office, a few restaurants, a hardware store. No tourist strip. No t-shirt shops. It is a working downtown, which is part of the appeal if you have spent any time in towns where the downtown is a strip mall on the bypass.

The Johnson County Welcome Center sits at 716 South Shady Street, a few blocks off the square. It is open Monday through Friday and houses a small but careful history museum — exhibits on the early settlement, the railroad era, the timber and mining economies that shaped the county, and the music. Admission is free. Twenty minutes is about right.

Heritage Hall, a few blocks from the square, is a restored auditorium from the early twentieth century — the kind of small-town theater that hosted vaudeville and movie matinees and now hosts community theater, traveling musicians, and the occasional bluegrass night. Check what is on the calendar before you write off a Friday evening up in Mountain City.

What you eat

Suba’s Restaurant has been the local sit-down for years — Italian-leaning, broad menu of steaks, pasta, seafood, and sandwiches at lunch. Locally well-regarded. Church Street Station downtown does a good burger and a good lunch. Teammates Pizza, opened in 2016, is the downtown pizzeria — solid pies, casual room. La Cucina Italian Kitchen and La Sabrosita round out the options.

This is not Asheville. Nobody is doing a deconstructed anything. It is plain food at fair prices, and Suba’s is the one most lake guests end up at if we send them.

The music

The Mountain City Fiddlers Convention is the historical claim Mountain City has on the music history of the country. In May 1925, the town hosted what is now considered one of the landmark gatherings of early Appalachian musicians — old-time fiddlers, banjo players, ballad singers — at a moment when commercial recording was just beginning to take notice of the southern mountains. The convention pulled in players from western North Carolina, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee, and the recordings and reputations that came out of it helped seed what eventually became commercial bluegrass and country.

The convention itself moved a few miles north over time and is now commemorated each October at Laurel Bloomery, along TN-91. Clarence “Tom” Ashley, one of the players who came up through that scene and became one of the most influential old-time musicians of his generation, was from this area. Dave Loggins, the songwriter behind “Please Come to Boston,” is also from Mountain City.

If you have any interest in Appalachian music — even casual — the October weekend at Laurel Bloomery is the one to come for. It is one of the most authentic music gatherings in the southern mountains.

What we actually send guests for

In rank order of how often it comes up at the townhouse:

1. Walmart. The closest Supercenter to the lake. If you need anything Walmart sells and the IGA does not, this is your drive.
2. The hospital. Johnson County Community Hospital is the closest emergency room to the townhouse — useful information for after-hours urgent care, not full emergencies. For anything significant you still want Elizabethton or Johnson City.
3. Lunch on the square. Suba’s or Church Street Station, paired with a walk around the courthouse and a stop at the Welcome Center museum. Half-day trip.
4. The drive itself. US-421 from Butler to Mountain City to Trade and on to Boone is one of the more interesting stretches of mountain highway in the area. It climbs, it twists, and it goes through pieces of three states (TN, NC, and a touch of VA through Trade) in about an hour.
5. The Snake. TN-91 from Mountain City north toward Damascus, Virginia is officially nicknamed “The Snake” and is a motorcycle and sports-car pilgrimage route — 489 turns in 33 miles. The hub is the Shady Valley Country Store. If you ride or you like driving for the sake of driving, this is the road. If you just want to get somewhere, take 421 instead.

Trade, the oldest unincorporated community in Tennessee

Five miles east of Mountain City on US-421, right at the North Carolina line, is Trade. It is the easternmost community in Tennessee, the highest community in the state at 3,133 feet, and the oldest unincorporated community in Tennessee — originally a Native American trading post on the Great Indian Warpath, in use long before European settlement.

There is not a lot in Trade today. The Trade Grist Mill, built around 1802, still stands. A few houses. A church. A historical marker. The annual Trade Mill and Native American Heritage Days each June (formerly called Trade Days) is the one weekend the village fills up — Appalachian music, traditional craft demonstrations, food.

If you are driving to Boone anyway, Trade is on the way. We mention it because most lake visitors blow through it without realizing what they just drove through, and that feels like a missed opportunity.

Backbone Rock and the road north

North of Mountain City, TN-91 leaves the valley and heads up toward the Virginia line. About fifteen minutes up, just before you cross into Virginia, is Backbone Rock — a natural rock fin in the Cherokee National Forest, with a railroad tunnel cut through it that is often described as “the shortest railroad tunnel in the world.” There is a recreation area, a small waterfall trail, picnic shelters.

A note on current conditions: Backbone Rock took significant hurricane damage in 2024, and parts of the recreation area have been closed for repair. Before driving up, check with the Cherokee National Forest’s Watauga Ranger District for the latest. When it is open, it is one of the more photogenic short stops in the area.

How Mountain City fits with a stay at the lake

Most of our guests do not come to Mountain City as a destination. They go for a Walmart run, or because someone forgot the prescription, or because they want a lunch on the way to Boone. That is the real version. As a half-day outing, it is a courthouse square, a small museum, a meal at Suba’s, and the drive itself.

The exception is if you are the kind of person who notices the difference between a tourist town and a real one. Mountain City is a real one. It is what Butler would probably look like today if the TVA had not flooded the original valley in 1948 and pushed the town through three rebuildings. There is a kind of unstaged Appalachian-county-seat quality to it that gets harder to find every year.

Related

• Butler, TN — the closest town to the lake, west instead of east
• Doe Mountain Recreation Area — the 8,600-acre OHV park five miles outside Mountain City, the biggest ATV trail system in the region
• Driving from TRI airport to Watauga Lake — if you are flying in, you will pass close to Mountain City on the long way around
• Watauga Lake — the lake itself