Rutledge, TN

Rutledge is Grainger County's seat in Richland Valley, along the southern base of Clinch Mountain. The town was established and incorporated in 1797, and its county role still shows in the courthouse address on Rutledge Pike. The annual Grainger County Tomato Festival gives the calendar its big local marker: tomatoes are the county's main commodity, and the festival returns in late July. Cherokee Lake and the Holston River sit downstream through the wider county geography. The local shorthand is courthouse, Clinch Mountain, Richland Valley, and tomatoes—an East Tennessee seat with its agricultural identity on the calendar.