Tennessee

Tennessee runs about 440 miles from the Mississippi River to the North Carolina line, and the poster's tagline, "From the Blues to the Smokies," covers the distance. The blues end is Beale Street in Memphis, which W. C. Handy put into song with "Beale Street Blues" in 1916 and which Congress named the Home of the Blues in 1977.

The Smokies end is Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina line and drew more than twelve million visits in 2024, making it the most visited national park in the country. The Cherokee called the range Shaconage, "place of blue smoke."

The poster shows both ends at dusk. At left, a vertical neon sign spelling Beale hangs beside a red-orange guitar, with Blues and Street signs on the brick below, and a guitarist on a stool and a saxophonist in a brimmed hat play in silhouette. At right, a white riverboat steams past a pair of palm trees, with layered blue-green mountains behind it under a gold sky scattered with small stars.