Nearby

     Today, about 18,000 people live in Bristol, Va., compared to about 25,000 residents of Bristol, Tenn. Any rivalries in this tale of two cities are mostly for the sake of a good laugh. There is the annual V-T game, in which football players from Bristol Virginia High School square off against the squad of Bristol Tennessee High School. You will also find athletic competition between Bristol’s Virginia Intermont College and the players of King College, a liberal arts school in Bristol, Tenn. Most often, however, these two Bristols are seen as one city, joined above State Street by the arching BRISTOL sign.

     “To most people, the state line does not exist,” says Lisa Meadows, the executive director of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce. “People flow freely from state to state unaware that they’re in a totally different municipality.” According to Meadows, the per capita income in each city is nearly identical. “But our tax structures are different. I think it depends on what the individual is looking for—Tennessee with no income tax or Virginia with a lower sales tax.”

     Indeed, this is a marriage of municipalities. On Bristol’s welcome signs, the shapes of the two states are joined. By law, each Bristol must maintain its own police force, school system and city council. But the two Bristols share the same post office, hospital, public library and chamber of commerce. Just as unique, the Bristol Herald Courier, the local daily newspaper, has its main office in Virginia, but it is published in Tennessee.

     Named for Bristol, England, the original town was laid out as a real estate venture on 100 acres by Joseph Anderson in 1852, with half in Virginia and half in Tennessee. By 1856, the railroad reached Bristol, and the town would grow into a thriving shopping destination among the Appalachian Mountains. “But they couldn’t join the rails,” says Bristol historian V.N. “Bud” Phillips. “There was a gap between the rails of about three feet. For quite a while, Virginia’s rail line did not connect to Tennessee’s railroad—and for many years, they had to take the cargo off the trains and reload the cattle, barrels of whiskey, chickens, hogs—you name it—and people.”