Kimball, Tennessee

Kimball, Tennessee is a small Marion County town that owes its existence almost entirely to the railroad. Founded in eighteen ninety as a model industrial town by Hannibal Kimball, with rail service on the Nashville, Chattanooga and Saint Louis Railway, Kimball became a shipping and industrial point for the coal and iron ore mined on the Cumberland Plateau above. The town sits in the valley of Battle Creek, just above where it joins the Tennessee River. Today Kimball is perhaps best known to drivers on Interstate Twenty-Four as an exit with gas stations and fast food between Chattanooga and the mountains, but the coal-handling infrastructure that gave it its start is still visible in the industrial character of the valley around it.