Before the likes of George Carter and J. Fred Johnson strode the land, the area now hosting downtown Kingsport was a wetland, a marsh, a swamp. A good place for hunting rabbits, it’s said.
Not a particularly good place to site a new town, so, two ditches were dug, one to the west and one to the east, to escort the water out of the downtown basin and off to somewhere else.
So here is Canal Street. It’s actually a cut-and-cover culvert: the western ditch. It comes out here:
This is on Reedy Creek, next to the old Irpco (sounds kind of like a burp, no?), which, in memory, is the old Coca-Cola bottling company on West Sullivan Street.
Bob Lawrence's Kingsport 
Hi Bob…back in 1981 I was the first hire when IRPCO (Industrial Rubber Products Company) out of Charleston West Virginia bought the old CocaCola bottling plant on West Sullivan Street, and re-purposed the building to an industrial hose and belt shop, with a sales counter, sales offices and warehouse storage…I remember that culvert dumping into Reedy Creek, as I used to watch fish hanging around right u see the outfall waiting for something to eat to come out…there also were really big wharf rats that were in and around that culvert and area…and when there were big storms with lots of rain, the water would roar out of the culvert, and Reedy Creek would overflow it’s banks and flood that entire Lovedale bottom area…
Sorry for the typo…it should say: “as I used to watch fish hanging around right under the outfall waiting for something to eat to come out…”
Ah, yes, those were the days: big rats and flooding Lovedale…the taming of Reedy Creek was a big deal!