[8] Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government (known as the Watauga Association, created in 1772) located west of both the Eastern Continental Divide and the original Thirteen Colonies.

When Spanish explorers first visited Tennessee, led by Hernando de Soto in 1539–43, it was inhabited by tribes of Muscogee and Yuchi people.

As European-American settlers expanded through the Province of Carolina, they came into armed conflict and forcibly displaced native populations over time to the south and west.

The latter were the last holdouts but, from 1838 to 1839, nearly 17,000 Cherokee were forced to walk overland from "emigration depots" in Alabama and Eastern Tennessee, such as Fort Cass, to Indian Territory west of Arkansas.

Instead of taking their new oath of allegiance, James Robertson led a group of some twelve or thirteen families involved with the Regulator movement from near where present-day Raleigh, North Carolina, now stands.

James Robertson's skillful diplomacy made peace with the irate Native Americans, who threatened to expel the settlers by force if necessary.

Before the Sycamore Shoals treaty, Henderson had hired Daniel Boone, an experienced hunter who had explored Kentucky, to travel to the Cherokee towns and inform them of the upcoming negotiations.

During the spring of 1779, James Robertson and a small group of Watauga settlers, acting upon the survey of Henderson's Transylvania Purchase, traveled west overland to select a site for a new settlement along the Cumberland River known as the French Lick (at present day Nashville).

The oldest frame house in Tennessee, this former frontier plantation home is located on Broad Street Extension on the eastern side of town above the banks of the Watauga River.

The Battle of Franklin took place on a farm owned by Col. John Tipton (now known as the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site) within the southern section of present-day Johnson City, Tennessee.

The gravesite of Samuel Tipton, "Founder of Elizabethton", is located at the Green Hill Cemetery, found on the crest of West Mill Street and overlooking northeast by north toward the historic site of Fort Caswell (this location as recorded in the unpublished John Sevier notes of Wisconsin historian Lyman C. Draper, and now more popularly known as Fort Watauga) [20] and the Watauga River.

Carter was promoted to the brevet rank of brigadier general and assigned by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to engage cavalry based in Kentucky against Confederate-held railroad lines and bridges in East Tennessee during the Civil War.

After leading successful cavalry operations at the Battle of Mill Springs on January 19, 1862, Carter accepted a commission as Brigadier General of volunteers in May and later continued leading operations at the Battle of Cumberland Gap in June as well as raids against Holston, Carter's Station, and Jonesville in December, in support of General William S. Rosecrans' attack on Murfreesboro.

Daniel Stover, a son-in-law of Andrew Johnson who lived near Elizabethton in the Siam community, led the party that destroyed the bridge at Union Depot (modern Bluff City).

In 1927, the 9-mile (14 km) portion of the ET&WNC railroad from Johnson City to Elizabethton was converted to standard gauge in order to more efficiently serve the NARC and Bemberg Rayon Plants.

The railroad's dormant track has been removed, pending negotiations between Elizabethton and Johnson City to establish a walking and bike path.

One of the ET&WNC's narrow-gauge steam locomotives (Engine #12) is still in existence, operating at the "Tweetsie Railroad" theme park at nearby Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

[22] In the 1910s and 1920s, another small railroad, the Laurel Fork Railway, operated out of Elizabethton paralleling the ET&WNC and Doe River to Hampton, where the line split off and ran to a sawmill near present-day Watauga Lake.

The 1928 Republican U.S. presidential candidate Herbert C. Hoover made his only southern campaign stop at Elizabethton and delivered his nationally broadcast October 6, 1928, election "stump speech" before 50,000 people gathered at the base of Lynn Mountain in Harmon Field (now at the mini-park and the Elizabethton/Carter County Chamber of Commerce building location on U.S. 321) during Elizabethton's Second Annual Industrial Celebration.

[26] During the Elizabethton speech, Hoover "...alluded to a matter of growing concern, the status of the Federal Government's involvement in the [hydrogeneration] production of [electric] power, specifically the Muscle Shoals (Alabama) issue: "There are local instances where the Government must enter the business field as a by-product to some great major purpose such as an improvement in navigation, flood control, irrigation, scientific research or national defense.

[27] The TVA Wilbur Dam has four hydroelectric generating turbines with a production capacity of 10,700 kilowatts of electricity[28] while the TVA Watauga hydroelectric facility upstream has two generating units with a net dependable capacity (the amount of power a hydrogenerating impounded reservoir can produce on an average day, minus the electricity used by the dam itself) of 66 megawatts.

[38][39] Elizabethton is also connected to larger commercial, shuttle, and cargo flights out of Tri-Cities Regional Airport northwest of Johnson City.

[40] The Doe River forms in Carter County, Tennessee, near the North Carolina line, just south of Roan Mountain State Park.

Located near the Cherokee National Forest boundary and to the left of Panhandle Road is a parking area and foot trail that leads down the slope to the Blue Hole Falls (approximately 45 feet (14 m) high).

Early broadcasters in the 1950s and 1960s quickly realized Holston Mountain would be a prime radio-television transmission location because it is the highest visible point that faces most of the major cities in Northeast Tennessee.

Various U.S. federal, Tennessee state, Sullivan, Washington and Carter County governmental agencies, along with utility microwave relay stations, also transmit base-to-mobile communications from the Holston High Point antenna farm and Rye Patch Knob.

East Tennessee PBS (or "ETPtv"), while not having a television repeater station serving the immediate area, broadcasts programming on two different over-the-air digital channels that can be received and viewed at higher hilltop elevations in Elizabethton.

The cost of constructing the newly resurfaced, 10-mile compacted crushed stone gravel Tweetsie Trail rails-to-trails project was financed with private and local government contributions.

Section I between Johnson City and Sycamore Shoals State Park in Elizabethton was completed in the summer of 2014 and opened on August 30 with the inaugural Tweetsie Trail Trek.

Section II of the trail begins at Sycamore Shoals State Park, proceeds to downtown Elizabethton and continues to the end of the line, near the Betsytowne Shopping Center.