Surgoinsville, TN

Surgoinsville is a Hawkins County town on the north side of the Holston River in northeast Tennessee, between Rogersville and Church Hill. The 2020 census counted 1,882 residents. It was incorporated in 1815 and named for Major James Surguine, a French Huguenot remembered as its founder. U.S. 11W passes through the northern part of town, putting Surgoinsville on a four-lane route between Kingsport and Rogersville. The Holston is the town's geographic thread, separating older residential areas from Phipps Bend's industrial zone. At Phipps Bend, the river valley shifts from old settlement to industry.

The Tennessee Valley Authority proposed a nuclear plant there in the 1970s; the project never became a working reactor, and the site became Phipps Bend Industrial Park, now home to manufacturing and a Tennessee College of Applied Technology campus. Fudge Farm, dating to about 1815, and a surviving Lustron house add older layers near the road. Surgoinsville's local scoop is an East Tennessee town where a French Huguenot's name, a river, a nuclear-project ghost, and a modern industrial park share one valley.