Barn Burner in a Backwater

With its World's Fair, Knoxville tries to get on the map

Knoxville is not the prettiest or most intriguing city in the world, or the U.S., or the Southeast, for that matter. There are scores of larger American cities, two of them right in Tennessee, Nashville and Memphis. Why, then, is it in Knoxville (pop. 183,000) that the 1982 World's Fair opens on May 1? Simple: seven years ago, a group of high-rolling local businessmen started thinking that a Knoxville World's Fair would be a nifty thing to whip up. Local citizens were dubious, and some are now peeved. But what was not long ago a desolate downtown patch of rail sidings and weeds is now a nearly complete 77-acre complex of gleaming pavilions, an aerial tramway, a fabric-covered amphitheater and a quarter-mile-long pit that will soon be World's Fair Lake. The fair's signature structure: the Sunsphere, a steel shaft housing two restaurants, which with its gilded-globe top looks like the world's only 266-ft. microphone. Says Fair President S.H. ("Bo") Roberts: "This is going to be a bench mark. We will think of Knoxville before and Knoxville after."

Some 2,500 construction workers are rushing to cover the fairground's red clay with sod, lay the roads and put the finishing touches on structures like the enormous Chinese-Egyptian-Peruvian pavilion before opening day. Most Knoxvillians are steeling themselves for a six-month influx of 11 million tourists. But for all that, the fair, named the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, will be modest by international standards. Montreal's Expo '67, for example, was ten times as costly, and included twice as many foreign participants.