Title: Mickey A. Jilton Collection, 1907-1926
Show Biographical Note
The records in the Jilton collection cover the period when the first city-owned water and sewer system was installed and when many paved streets and sidewalks in the Johnson City corporate limits were first constructed. Published histories contain scanty information about early paving in Johnson City, but what is available is evidence of the city's growth during this period. In 1914, Johnson City had 13 miles of paved streets; eighty per cent of these were asphalt and the remainder brick. By 1927, the city had 45 miles of asphalt paving and 68 miles of sidewalk. The first water supply in Johnson City came from springs at the Brush Creek Campground on Watauga Avenue, from a spring on the Faw residence lot, and from the Jobe spring across from the Clinchfield Railroad depot on Buffalo Street. In 1887, the first waterworks, the McCollum Water Company, drew its gravity-flow supply from a spring at the base of Roan Hill at the end of "Spring" Street. It served 40 customers. Brush Creek was relied upon to carry off sewage and surface water. In 1890-91, Henry Clay of Massachusetts and W. E. Burbage of Georgia organized the Watauga Water Company, drawing a gravity-flow supply from Sinking Creek and its tributary springs. The first pumping of water was in 1905, from Sinking Creek to the Jenny Hill reservoir behind the Charles C. Sherrod residence. The company sold out to the city in 1909. By 1914, city water came 16 miles by gravity from three Unicoi County springs. The water system boasted over 20 miles of major water mains and equivalent sewer pipe. In 1923, Johnson City's population of 16,000 enjoyed 95 miles of paved and macadamized streets, 30 miles of sewer, and 65 miles of water mains.
