Harrogate · Middlesboro · Tazewell · Ewing
Setting up in the area
Where three states meet, your power company, your grocery store, and your mailbox can sit in different ones. Here’s what living here is actually like, and how people get set up, in the order it usually happens.
Why here
What it's like to live here
Harrogate is small. Lincoln Memorial University sits in the middle of it, and Knoxville, the nearest city of any size, is about 55 miles south. If you are coming from somewhere with a bus timetable and a store open at midnight, you will notice the difference in your first week.
What you give up is choice. Fewer restaurants, fewer shops, and a drive to Middlesboro or Knoxville for things a city would have put on your street. You need a car. Claiborne County has public transit, but it runs door to door on advance booking rather than to a timetable you can turn up for.
What you get back is room. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park sits at the head of the valley and costs nothing to walk into. The Powell River runs through the county with public access points along it. Three states meet within a short drive of campus, and most of what is worth doing out here is outside.
The last difference takes longer to get used to. In a town this size people know who you are. Your landlord knows your neighbors, and the woman at the register will start saying hello. Some people move here for exactly that. Others never quite settle into it, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you are before you sign a lease.
Before move-in
Renters insurance
Sort this one out before you sign. Most landlords around here expect renters insurance, and some will want to see proof of it before they hand over keys.
It covers what you moved in with, and it covers you if something you do damages the building. Your landlord’s policy covers the building and nothing of yours inside it. A laptop, a bike and a bed add up faster than most people expect them to.
It does not cost much, and it is one of the quicker things on this page to set up: a phone call, and a few questions about the address.
So you know where this is coming from: this site is run by Campbell Insurance, an independent agency in Harrogate, and renters policies are part of what we write. Ask us for a quote, or go somewhere else if you would rather. Just do not move in without it.
Before move-in
Electricity
Harrogate, Cumberland Gap, Tazewell and New Tazewell all sit in Claiborne County, and Ewing sits in Lee County, Virginia. Both counties fall inside the territory of Powell Valley Electric Cooperative, the member-owned co-op based in New Tazewell, which serves eight counties across Tennessee and Virginia.
Call a few days before you move in. What the co-op asks for is identification, a signed application and, in most cases, a deposit.
Middlesboro sits over the state line, and Kentucky Utilities bills the power there. Ask your landlord which company serves your address before you start calling around, because the boundary follows the property and not the town name.
Before move-in
Water and sewer
Water here is district-based, and the district follows the address, not the town name. Your landlord will know which district bills the property — ask when you sign, then it’s one phone call and usually a small deposit. Plenty of rural homes are on well water and septic instead, which means no water bill at all; the listing or the landlord will say so.
First week
Trash
Inside Middlesboro city limits, trash pickup comes with city service. Waste removal is one of the jobs the city’s public works department does.
The Tennessee side works differently. There is no universal curbside pickup, and most households haul their bags to a county convenience center instead. Claiborne County runs eight of them, free to county residents, taking household garbage along with cardboard, plastic, paper, cans and used oil. Hours and what each site accepts vary, so check the county’s list and ask your landlord which one is closest. Some rentals include a private hauler instead.
First week
Internet and cell service
Coverage changes address by address out here — the house next door can have fiber while yours doesn’t. Before you count on anything, ask the landlord what actually serves the property; they’ll know what the last tenant used. Fixed wireless and Starlink fill the gaps where cable doesn’t reach, and if you work or study online, test your phone’s signal at the house before you rely on hotspotting. LMU students get campus wifi either way.
Good to know
Groceries and errands
Start at the Village Market IGA in Harrogate. It is convenient to campus, it is well stocked, and the prices are reasonable. Get to know it, and spend your money right there in Harrogate if you can. In a town this size, where you shop shows up in what the town still has.
The same building holds The Prescription Shop, a hardware store far better stocked than you would guess from the outside, and the Village Gift Shop, so a lot of small errands turn into one stop.
Middlesboro is the bigger run, over the state line: Walmart, Food City, more pharmacies, and most of the fast food. New Tazewell has its own Food City the other direction. For a mall or an airport, Knoxville is about 55 miles south.
Good to know
Doctors and urgent care
Two hospitals cover this area, one either side of the state line. Covenant Health Claiborne is in Tazewell, on Old Knoxville Road. Middlesboro ARH Hospital is in Kentucky, and names Claiborne County, Tennessee alongside Bell County, Kentucky and Lee County, Virginia as the counties it serves.
For something that needs seeing the same day, you have three options: an urgent care clinic on 25E in Middlesboro, the emergency room at either hospital, or a walk-in slot at your own doctor’s office. Ask your practice about its walk-in hours when you register.
ARH also runs community clinics away from the main hospital and lists them on its own site. Find out which hospital your insurance prefers before you need one.
Good to know
Weather
Summers are hot, humid and often hazy, and afternoon thunderstorms are common. Winters are mild but changeable, with some snow and some ice most years and more of both up on the mountain. Fog and low cloud hang around all year, most of all first thing and after rain, so a morning that starts gray is not a forecast.
A few hundred feet of elevation matters more here than you would expect. The park service puts ridges and overlooks five to ten degrees cooler than the valley floor, and freeze and thaw leaves ice on the shaded roads and steps after the open ones have dried. Nothing here calls for special gear, but an ice scraper and a pair of boots that can take mud earn their keep.
Getting your bearings
Three states, one short drive
Everything below is within a short drive of the LMU campus. People cross state lines here the way city people cross neighborhoods — it stops feeling strange fast.
HarrogateTN
The LMU campus town. Most of daily life happens along Highway 25E.
Cumberland GapTN
A few old blocks at the foot of the mountain, below the national park. The town keeps its own events calendar.
MiddlesboroKY
The shopping town, over the state line: Walmart, Food City, and one of the two hospitals.
Tazewell & New TazewellTN
The county seat, south of campus. Courthouse, county offices, banks, and a second Food City.
EwingVA
The quiet farmland side of the Gap, along the Virginia valley road.
Getting your bearings
Crossing the mountain
Tennessee and Kentucky are joined under the mountain by the Cumberland Gap Tunnel, two bores of two lanes each carrying Highway 25E. It opened in 1996 and there is no toll: you drive back and forth as often as you like. The National Park Service owns it, Tennessee and Kentucky run it between them, and there are operators on duty around the clock. More than 24,000 vehicles a day go through, so it stops being an event by your second week.
Message signs before the portal tell you what is happening inside. The rules are short: nothing over sixteen feet six, propane on an RV shut off before you enter, and no pedestrians or bicycles in the tunnels at all. If you break down in there, put your flashers on and stay in the vehicle. The operators are EMTs and they are watching.
Getting your bearings
Getting around
Plan on a car. Claiborne County does have public transit: ETHRA runs a door-to-door service you book at least three business days ahead, which works for an appointment and not at all for getting to a nine o’clock class.
Highway 25E is the spine of the whole area. Campus, the tunnel and Middlesboro to the north; Tazewell and New Tazewell to the south; most of what you need a short drive off it either way. Knoxville is about 55 miles south, and the nearest large airport is there too.
Parking is free almost everywhere, which takes a while to stop noticing if you have come from a city.
Once you’re settled
The river
The Powell River runs through Claiborne County on its way from southwest Virginia down to the Clinch River at Norris Lake. It is the second largest undammed river in Tennessee, and The Tennessee Conservationist calls it one of the most biologically diverse rivers in any temperate climate. The Fish and Wildlife Service counts more than a hundred species of fish in it and more than thirty species of freshwater mussel, which is the real measure of how clean it is.
Paddlers rate it Class I, which is the grade that means a family afternoon rather than something you train for. Getting onto it is the part the county has worked at: the Claiborne County Tourism Commission runs the Powell River Blueway to open up public access for paddling and fishing, and it publishes a map of the access points. There are more of them than you would guess.
Once you’re settled
Fishing and paddling
A kayak or a canoe covers most of what people do on the water here, and a good deal of it happens standing up with a rod in hand. Anglers rate the Powell as one of the best smallmouth rivers in the country, and the wade fishing is why plenty of people bother with the access points at all. Herons, kingfishers and the occasional bald eagle come with the trip whether you catch anything or not.
You need a fishing license from whichever state you are standing in. Tennessee asks for one from age 13, Kentucky from age 16, and both sell them online. Check before you go rather than after.
Once you’re settled
Hiking and the park
Cumberland Gap National Historical Park sits at the head of the valley: 14,000 acres, 85 miles of trail, and no entrance pass required to walk into it. That range runs from a six-hundred-foot walk out to the Pinnacle Overlook, where on a clear day you can see three states, up to a full day on the ridge.
Bring the dog. Leashed pets are allowed on every surface trail in the park, though not in Gap Cave or the visitor center.
Once you’re settled
Eating out and the movies
You can eat in the town of Cumberland Gap itself: Gap Creek Coffee House, Nineteen19 Grill & Bar, Angelo’s in the Gap and The Juice Spot. Places open and change hands here, and the town keeps its own list of where to eat and shop.
For a film, Golden Ticket Cinemas is at the mall in Middlesboro. None of this adds up to a big night out, and when you want one you drive to Knoxville.
Once you’re settled
Things that happen here
This site does not keep an events calendar. The organizations that put things on around here keep their own, and those stay current.
The town of Cumberland Gap publishes an events calendar, sponsored by Guardians of the Gap and the Tennessee Downtowns Program. Festivals, town meetings, and a First Friday Small Farmers Market the calendar lists as monthly. Look there rather than here. Anything we copied across would be stale before you read it.
Guardians of the Gap is a nonprofit in the town of Cumberland Gap that runs community events through the year, including special events up at the national park.
Levitt AMP Middlesboro is a run of outdoor concerts in downtown Middlesboro, put on by Middlesboro Main Street, from midsummer into September. There is no ticket and no charge.