Nestled snugly in the Southern Appalachians astride the Tennessee- Kentucky border on Interstate 75, Jellico offers a gateway to some of the most breathtaking natural beauty of the United States - from the Cumberland Mountains to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the south and the beautiful bluegrass country of Kentucky to the north.
Jellico was founded in the late 1800s as a trading center for the booming coal mine industry. Indeed, it got its name from the seam of high quality bituminous coal known as Jellico Coal. It is the only place in the world that carries this name. Jellico Coal, in turn, got its name from the Angelica plant that grows wild in abundance on the mountains that surround this picturesque little city.
Jellico also is noted for producing a great number of people prominent in a variety of fields, from opera stars such as the late Grace Moore to writers and educators.
Grace Moore, the internationally famous star of the Metropolitan Opera, Broadway, motion pictures, radio and recordings, was born December 5, 1898, in Del Rio near Newport, Tennessee. Her family moved to Jellico when she was a young girl. She attended Jellico High School where she was captain of the girls basketball team in 19l6. She was selected by Florenz Ziegfeld of Ziegfeld Follies fame as one of the ten most beautiful women in the world. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her motion picture, "One Night of Love", and was the subject of a movie titled, "So This is Love", in which Kathryn Grayson portrayed the "Tennessee Nightingale", as Grace was called. She died tragically in an airplane crash in 1947 at the height of her career. The Grace Moore Centennial will be observed in 1998.
Homer Rodeheaver, evangelistic singer with Billy Sunday, grew up in Newcomb, a small community near Jellico. His Father owned a lumber business in Jellico. He wrote gospel songs like "Brighten the Corner Where You Are" and "There's a Rainbow in the Sky For You", in the Rodeheaver Gospel Songbook. He is a very popular speaker and entertainer with his Reedy Creek String Band in which is wife and doctor son also play.
David Harkness, a Jellico native, served as principal of Jellico High School and taught English at Lincoln Memorial University before becoming director of library services at the University of Tennessee Division of Continuing Education in Knoxville. He was taken into the LMU Literary Hall of Fame and the Educators Hall of Fame. A nationally acclaimed Lincoln scholar, he received in 1993 the Lincoln Diploma of Honor given by LMU. With R. Gerald McMurtry, he wrote Lincoln's Favorite Poets, published by the University of Tennessee Press. He also has published numerous tracts and for many years wrote a column for The Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Dr. William A. McCall, who was born and reared in Proctor Hollow near Jellico, was for 41 years a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Among his literary achievements were How To Measure Education and The McCall Speller. He was the co-author of the McCall-Crabb Standard Test Lessons in Reading. He also authored I Thunk Me A Thaut (Teacher's College Press, Columbia University, 1975), a compilation of notes he made to himself while a youngster in Proctor Hollow.
Tom Siler, a nationally known sportswriter and author, was a native of Jellico. He was with The Associated Press in Nashville and Chicago and for many years was editor of The Knoxville News-Sentinel. He served as president of the National Sportswriters Association and authored three books on the history of the University of Tennessee's football team. His interst in history resulted in the book Tennessee Towns.
Edgar Miller, also a native of Jellico, achieved success as a newspaperman and editor. He started on The Knoxville Journal, later working for The Associated Press in Knoxville, Nashville, New York, Baltimore, and Dover, Delaware, as well as serving for many years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in Latin America. He later worked for United Press International at its world headquarters in Washington, D.C., as foreign editor and finally as assistant managing editor for news. He also served as managing editor of The Chattanooga Times and editor of The Oak Ridger. He now is founding editor of The East Tennessee Catholic and serves as a consultant in Africa for the U.S. Information Agency. He twice served as a Pulitzer Prize juror and served two terms as president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Brazil.
John Fox Jr. was Jellico's first author. He worked with his brothers, Oliver and James, in the coal-mining business in the area. His first book, A Mountain Europa (1897), has a Jellico setting. He used two Jellico people as characters in his very popular novel, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, made into a famous play and later a motion picture.
Frank Milton Smith was born in Jellico and became a prominent figure in radio and television in Cincinnati and New York. He handled contracts with many prominent figures in the entertainment world and was Lowell Thomas's business manager.
Jellico's fortunes over the years have ebbed and flowed with the coal business. It was once the largest city in Campbell County and a market area for more than 25,000 people living in the coal-mining camps in the region.
Jellico also is the birthplace of the Mountain Assembly of the Church of God, a religious organization that now reaches worldwide.
Today, Jellico's population is about 2,000. The town has two banks, modern shops, a golf course, a beautiful state park on ground reclaimed from earlier strip mining, modern motels, restaurants, an excellent hospital, good schools and good roads. There are eight modern churches with a combined membership of about 1,000 people.
Although Jellico was only incorporated in 1886, a settlement had existed since around 1795, a year before Tennessee became the 16th state. This settlement was known as Smithburg, after a number of families named Smith who lived there. In 1883 the name of the town was changed to Jellico.
In Miller McDonald's history of Campbell County he records that "a tavern keeper of the early 1800s, who home was on the state line, avoided state officers by running back and forth across the line as the need arose". The saloons and houses of entertainment on the Kentucky side resulted in frequent Saturday-night shootings in the early history of Jellico and its being considered a rather wild border town of dubious reputation even after 1900.
Despite its boisterous beginning, Jellico in the 20th century has been a town of conspicuous hospitality and friendliness to visitors. It is a town that has inspired fierce loyalty in its citizens, both those who have spent their lives there and those who traveled elsewhere to seek their fortunes.
As the late Don Whitehead, the best-selling author, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, war correspondent and newspaper columnist, once wrote:
"Anytime I mention the name of that little town on the Kentucky- Tennessee border called Jellico, it's like stirring up a hive of bees with a stick. Not that anybody gets stung, but there is such an instant, excited buzzing".
"The reason for this, as far as I can surmise, is that anybody who was born in Jellico, lived in Jellico, had kinfolk in Jellico or even happened to pass through Jellico developed an affection for the town. It beats anything I've ever seen".