Urban History & Crime Tour by Knoxville Walking Tours

Take a walk through the wild side of Knoxville history, when hot words turned into hot lead. Gunfire, robbery, murder, and general mayhem took place on nearly every corner, as upstanding citizens and low-down hoodlums met on the street. You might be surprised how hard it is to tell them apart.

Knoxville history is full of stories about strong intelligent tough people who struggled through hardship to become leaders, scholars, and statesmen. This tour isn't about them—our subject is crime and criminals, and in Knoxville we’ve never had a shortage of either. Male, female, singly or in groups, someone was always up to something around here, no matter what time of the day or night. We’re going to spend some time on the seamy side of our history today, with people we would probably have avoided had we been around in what some people persist in calling the Good Old Days—but reading the newspapers and court records from those times is enough to send shivers down our spine even today.