Kimball, TN

Kimball is a Marion County town in the lower Sequatchie Valley, with the Tennessee River bending around its eastern edge and the Cumberland Plateau rising to the west. The 2020 census counted 1,545 residents. Hannibal Kimball and the Anglo-American Company founded it in 1890 as a planned industrial town, with a layout modeled in part on Colorado Springs. The setting was part of the plan: river frontage, railroad connections, valley farmland, and nearby coal and iron deposits put Kimball between South Pittsburg, Jasper, and the Chattanooga area.

Chattanooga State Community College's Kimball site opened in 1993 and now serves Marion, Grundy, and Sequatchie counties with nursing, industrial, welding, chemical-operator, and college-credit programs. That campus gives the town a present-day role that grows directly out of its old industrial ambition. The river, rail corridors, and valley roads still point in the same directions they did when Kimball was laid out. Kimball's local scoop is a planned industrial town that grew into a small regional training center beside the Tennessee River.