AI History : The "Big Elm" in Kingsport refers to a famous, massive elm tree near the Holston River, noted in explorer Dr. Thomas Walker's 1748 journal, making it the earliest recorded tree in Tennessee. Walker mentioned it during his surveying expedition, marking it as a landmark near the sacred Long Island of the Cherokees, with later history linking it to Daniel Boone and the Rotherwood Estate before its demise in the 1940s. Frederick Ross built the silk mill on the North Fork of the Holston