Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Blaine, TN

Blaine is a small incorporated city in the southwestern corner of Grainger County, Tennessee, and a rural suburb of Knoxville, about 19 miles northeast of that city and 14 miles southwest of Rutledge, the county seat.

The community was first known as Blaine's Crossroads, where the Emory Road, Indian Ridge Road, and the Great Indian Warpath - today's U.S. Route 11W - intersected; Shields' Station, a popular tavern and store, stood at the crossroads by the early 1830s.

During the Civil War, Blaine's Crossroads was a Union strongpoint in the 1863 Knoxville Campaign: federal forces fell back there after the Battle of Bean's Station and turned back General James Longstreet's attempt to advance on Knoxville.

Around 1890, Pennsylvania native Robert Blaine opened a general store at the crossroads, and the growing community took his name.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Blaine was a stop on the Knoxville and Bristol Railroad, known locally as the "Peavine Railroad."

On December 31, 1952, country singer Hank Williams passed through Blaine on his final ride toward West Virginia; a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper who stopped his car for speeding saw Williams lying motionless in the back seat and believed he had died, and fined his driver $25.

Blaine incorporated as a city in 1978, after residents petitioned and voted to incorporate in order to fight Browning-Ferris Industries' plan to build a large sanitary landfill for Knoxville's waste in the community.

Blaine's official motto is "The City With Determination," reflecting its fight over the landfill.

The 2020 census counted 2,084 residents and 825 households in Blaine, and the Census Bureau classifies all of the city's residents as rural.

The city covers about 9.5 square miles near the point where Grainger, Knox, and Union counties meet, with Clinch Mountain rising to the north and House Mountain visible to the southwest.