Spring City

History

Spring City began as a stop along the Cincinnati Southern Railroad in the 1870s. The town was originally named Sulphur Springs, because of the mass amount of sulphur in the water. Sometime later it became "Rheaville," and later became incorporated with nearby Rhea Springs, and took on the name Rhea Springs. Due to an explosion, much of the town flooded or burnt, and the town relocated to its current location and was renamed Spring City, in honor of the original settlement, Sulphur Springs. The original location now lies at the bottom of a nearby section of Watts Bar Lake. Spring City thrived as a railroad shipping hub during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its first railroad depot, a simple wooden building constructed in 1879, burned in 1892, and was replaced by a larger one. This second depot was in turn replaced by the current depot, which was completed by the Southern Railway in 1909. The city received an economic boost in 1942 with the Tennessee Valley Authority's completion of Watts Bar Dam and its associated reservoir southeast of the town. That same year saw the completion of the Watts Bar Fossil Plant, TVA's first coal-fired plant. In 1973, TVA began building Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Its first reactor, Watts Bar Unit 1, became active in 1996. The construction of the second reactor, Watts Bar Unit 2, was originally suspended in 1985, but resumed in 2007. It entered commercial operation in October 2016. On August 22, 1955, 11 schoolchildren were killed, and many others injured, when their school bus was struck by a 103-car freight train at a track crossing in Spring City. On July 28, 2016, a train hauling coal derailed by the train depot and museum due to a faulty wheel on one of the privately owned coal cars. There were no casualties. A lengthy…

Geography

Spring City is located at (35.689422, -84.863885). According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it (1.21%) is water.

Race & ethnicity

Largest nearby schools

• Rhea County High School
  High · Evensville · 1,500 students · 17.4:1 ratio
• Spring City Elementary
  Elementary · Spring City · 570 students · 12.4:1 ratio
• Rhea Middle School
  Middle · Evensville · 556 students · 15.4:1 ratio
• Spring City Middle School
  Middle · Spring City · 293 students · 18.3:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.57 — 2025-07-10
  2 km E of Greenback, Tennessee
• M 4.1 — 2025-05-10
  21 km SE of Greenback, Tennessee
• M 2.58 — 2024-03-10
  14 km W of Graysville, Tennessee
• M 2.58 — 2024-02-29
  9 km NNW of Graysville, Tennessee
• M 2.5 — 2023-04-21
  9 km WSW of Oakdale, Tennessee
• M 2.51 — 2022-10-09
  2 km N of Farragut, Tennessee