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Tennessee is a constituent state of the United States of America. It is located in the upper South of the eastern United States and became the 16th state of the union in 1796. The geography of Tennessee is unique. Its extreme breadth of 432 miles (695 km) stretches from the Appalachian Mountain boundary with North Carolina in the east to the Mississippi River borders with Missouri and Arkansas in the west; its narrow width, only 112 miles (180 km), separates its northern neighbours, Kentucky and Virginia, from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to the south. Nashville is the capital and Memphis the largest city.
The geographic diversity of Tennessee has generated a variety of economic, social, and cultural patterns that have led residents to perceive the state in terms of three “grand divisions”: East, Middle, and West Tennessee. East Tennessee, dominated geographically by the Great Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau (also called Cumberland Mountains), is the home of the state’s well-known mountain traditions. Knoxville, and Kingsport are East Tennessee’s major population centres. Middle Tennessee has level, fertile land interrupted regularly by gently rolling hills; it traditionally has been a balanced agricultural and commercial region, with Nashville as its main urban centre. West Tennessee is mainly flat land with rich soil and long has had an economy based on plantation agriculture, notably cotton.