865 Area Code – Knoxville, Tennessee: Location, Time Zone & History

Knoxville anchors area code 865, split from area code 423 effective November 1, 1999. The split left a curious geography behind: 423 was reduced to two non-contiguous pieces, one around Chattanooga and Cleveland and another around the Tri-Cities and Morristown, on either side of the new 865 territory, because the Tri-Cities region was judged too large to fold into 865 but too small to warrant its own code.

865 has never needed an overlay, yet it adopted mandatory ten-digit local dialing on October 24, 2021 anyway, a step taken specifically to accommodate the new 988 suicide-prevention lifeline. The code carries a bit of local pride on the keypad, too: its digits spell "VOL," a nod to the University of Tennessee Volunteers and Tennessee's own nickname as the Volunteer State.

• Oak Ridge, once the wartime "Secret City," was a key uranium-enrichment site for the Manhattan Project.
• Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville serve as the main gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most-visited national park in the country, and are home to Dollywood.
• Knoxville hosted the 1982 World's Fair, and its Sunsphere still marks the skyline.
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville anchor the region's research and education economy.