Tennessee
Quick facts
- Capital
- Nashville
- Largest city
- capital
- Motto
- Agriculture and Commerce
- Abbreviation
- TN
- Area
- 42,181 sq mi (109,248 km²)
- Population (2020)
- 7,315,076
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Tennessee” page (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The capital and largest city is Nashville, which is the country music center of America. Tennessee borders eight states including Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Several professional sports teams play there, including the Tennessee Titans of the NFL, the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA, the Nashville Predators of the NHL and the Tennessee Volunteers.
Cherokee and other Native American tribes lived in Tennessee before the arrival of Europeans. African American slaves worked on plantations in the state. Tennessee is known for its country music and Southern cuisine.
Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populated state and as of 2025, the state’s population is around 7.22 million.
History
The 2016 Tennessee Heritage Protection Act puts “the brakes on cities’ and counties’ ability to remove monuments or change names of streets and parks”.
In Crossfield, Tennessee, the South Cumberland Elementary School: Murals painted in 2003, one of a large Confederate battle flag and another showing the team’s mascot, the Rebel, triumphantly holding a Confederate battle flag while a boy in a blue outfit is being lynched on a tree, were altered/removed in 2018 after it was discovered by the anti-hate organization located in Shelbyville.
In Franklin, the Forrest Crossing Golf Course, owned by the American Golf Corporation, changed its name to the Crossing Golf Course on September 22, 2017. It had been named after Confederate General and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest.
In Memphis, Tennessee, Three Confederate-themed city parks were “hurriedly renamed” before the passage of the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act of 2013. Confederate Park (1908) was renamed Memphis Park; Jefferson Davis Park (1907) was renamed Mississippi River Park; and Forrest Park (1899) was renamed Health Sciences Park. The vote of the City Council was unanimous. At the time the monuments were dedicated, African Americans could not use those parks. Many other monuments have been removed or renamed in Memphis.
Written for younger readers
Tennessee, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: North America
Tennessee is a state located in the Southern United States. In 1796, it became the sixteenth state to join the Union. The capital city is Nashville, and the largest city is Memphis. Tennessee is ranked 34th by land area and 17th in in the United States by population.
The area now known as Tennessee was first inhabited by Native Americans nearly 12,000 years ago. The names of the cultural groups that lived in the area between first settlement and the time that the European’s made contact with the Native American’s are unknown.
Summers in the state are generally hot. Summer nights tend to be cooler in East Tennessee. Winters tend to be mild to cool. The state averages around 50 days of thunderstorms per year, some of which can be quite severe. Tornadoes are possible throughout the state. On average, the state has 15 tornadoes per year. Tornadoes in Tennessee can be severe, and Tennessee leads the nation in the percentage of total tornadoes which have fatalities. Winter storms are an occasional problem, although ice storms are more likely to occur.
- State Bird - Mockingbird
- State wild animal - Raccoon
- State insect - Lightning Bug and the Lady Bug
- State flower - Purple Iris
- State tree - Tulip Poplar
- State fruit - Tomato
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Tennessee” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.