Tennessee's largest cities

[JMT]

Originally Posted by Tennesseestorm

And one thing that is misleading about Bristol, TN's population is that is the # for Bristol on the Tennessee side... Bristol is actually in TN and VA - which makes total city population near 50,000. So, Bristol is really "double" in size than what those figures show. I guess thats the odd thing about having one city split in two states.

Not really. Bristol, Virginia is a completely separate city from Bristol, Tennessee. Farragut isn't included in Knoxville's city population or Germantown in Memphis's population, so there's no need to include Bristol VA in Bristol TN's city population even though they share a common street and have the same name.

Bristol, Virginia was originally named Goodson but changed its name to Bristol in 1890 when Bristol, Tennessee grew in prominence and people on the Virginia side started referring to their own area as Bristol instead of Goodson.

I can think of only two other places in the country similar to Bristol TN/VA: Texarkana AR/TX and Kansas City KS/MO. And of those three, I like Bristol the best.

[Tennesseestorm]

True and I understand what you are saying for sure. What I was getting to however is that # still makes it seem like Bristol is smaller than it is (if they know that a Bristol VA does not exist and is connecting to Bristol TN), because you have people mingling all around both sides of the city. Lots of people go to exit 7 in Bristol VA to the huge shopping center complex (which seems like there are 25,000 people just jammed in that area that are shopping, eating, in the large hotels or at the large theater). I also know that ALL of the "welcome to Bristol" signs that have the cities population includes Bristol TN and Bristol VA total, so it seems like the city of Bristol itself (the leaders ?) thinks of it as one city, even though it is totally different, since it is two different states - two license plates, different taxes, different power companies, etc. Basically what I meant to say was that population # is really just a technicality.

I personally wish that they had of not combined the cities names. It gets confusing for alot of people that are not familiar with the area. Case in point... that population showing that Bristol TN has 25,000 people. Someone that has never been here, comes and sees that there are alot more people here than that # suggests. I think Bristol VA has a population of about 22,000.

Originally Posted by JMT

Not really. Bristol, Virginia is a completely separate city from Bristol, Tennessee. Farragut isn't included in Knoxville's city population or Germantown in Memphis's population, so there's no need to include Bristol VA in Bristol TN's city population even though they share a common street and have the same name.

Bristol, Virginia was originally named Goodson but changed its name to Bristol in 1890 when Bristol, Tennessee grew in prominence and people on the Virginia side started referring to their own area as Bristol instead of Goodson.

I can think of only two other places in the country similar to Bristol TN/VA: Texarkana AR/TX and Kansas City KS/MO. And of those three, I like Bristol the best.