Wright Forest Natural Area #1

Wright Forest Natural Area #1

Wright Forest Natural Area is the only known example of an extensive white pine and hemlock pre-settlement forest, which originally covered much of the floor of Shady Valley in Johnson County. The forest is part of a working “century farm,” having been in the same...
Wolf Creek Cypress #33

Wolf Creek Cypress #33

Taxodium distichum In the mid-1700s Reuben Allen built a log house in the mountains of Cocke County that would eventually grow into first the Allen Inn and later the Wolf Creek Inn. The inn became the terminal of the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad in...
Scopes Trial Grove #12

Scopes Trial Grove #12

The small Dayton courthouse became one of the most famous scenes in history with the 1925 Scopes Trial. The trial pitted the three-time presidential candidate and famous creationist William Jennings Bryan against well-known criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow and the...
Samuel Smith White Pine #6

Samuel Smith White Pine #6

Pinus strobus In 1832, seventy-year-old Samuel Smith brought a party of 350 settlers including his family through the Cumberland Gap to settle in Tennessee. He was given a thousand acres of land in Montgomery County as a pension for his service in the Revolutionary...
Old Oak of Tusculum University #19

Old Oak of Tusculum University #19

Quercus alba The Old Oak once shared honors as co-champion white oak in the state of Tennessee. Standing over 100 feet tall, with a circumference of twenty-three feet and a spread of 110 feet, the tree is between two hundred fifty and three hundred years old. The Old...