Caryville, TN

Caryville is a Campbell County town of 2,212 residents in the 2020 census, in a Powell Valley between Cross Mountain and the hills east of town. It began as Wheeler’s Station, a railroad stop founded in 1867, and took the Caryville name by 1880. U.S. 25W and Interstate 75 set the town’s regional shape, with two I-75 exits carrying hotels, motels, and restaurants along the route. Cove Lake State Park is the town’s defining landmark. The 606-acre park sits inside Caryville, with a lake created by Cove Creek and facilities for camping, fishing, paddling, walking, cycling, and wildlife viewing.

The Civilian Conservation Corps built the park’s first office, restaurant, cabins, dock, roads, and shelters in the 1930s, and the old park office and part of the restaurant remain. Caryville Elementary and the Friends of Cove Lake add a school-and-community layer around the park. The local scoop is an Appalachian highway town where a railroad stop grew into a place organized around a state park and its lake.