Midtown, TN

Midtown is a census-designated place in Roane County, Tennessee, near Harriman and Kingston and within the Knoxville metro. Its most unusual local detail is political, not geographic. Residents voted in the 1990s to incorporate, and Midtown operated as a municipality for a time. That incorporation was later challenged in court; after the state law behind it was struck down, Midtown ceased to exist as a municipality and the territory returned to rural Roane County. The name remains on the census map, so Midtown is now both a recognized community and a reminder of a town government that did not last. Interstate 40 and Roane County's river country help define the broader setting, while Harriman and Kingston are the nearby civic reference points. Midtown is a small Roane County place with an unusually complicated answer to the simple question of what kind of place it is.