Jan 17, 2018
Quercus velutina Just four years after the Civil War a small group of emancipated slaves met at a local schoolhouse on Holly’s Creek. They asked the Reverend William S. Doak, the Presbyterian missionary and president of Tusculum College, about forming a congregation...
Jan 17, 2018
On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 lifted off from Cape Kennedy on its way to the moon. Aboard were Alan Shepard, Ed Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa. Each astronaut was allowed to take some personal items aboard, including Commander Shepard’s historic golf club. Roosa, at one...
Jan 17, 2018
Few areas of East Tennessee are as well-known as Montvale Springs, on the side of Chilhowee Mountain. A log hotel was built on the site in 1832. Woodville, the first novel published in Tennessee, was written there by Charles Todd. In 1853 Asa Watson razed the log...
Jan 17, 2018
During the early settlement years of Tennessee, President John Adams commissioned Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, General Andrew Pickens, and General James Winchester to survey a line from the then-southern terminus of the United States at Fort Southwest Point (Kingston) to...
Jan 17, 2018
Ginkgo biloba Four large ginkgoes were specified in the 1892 landscaping plans of the grand and glorious Four Seasons Hotel in Harrogate. Originally designed as a health resort and spa for the wealthy coal and iron businessmen of nearby Middlesboro, Kentucky, this...
Jan 17, 2018
Fagus grandifolia During the Civil War, the 58th North Carolina Confederate Regiment was assigned to guard Big Creek Gap of the Cumberland Mountains, now the towns of LaFollette and Jacksboro. The regiment suffered greatly from diseases in the bitter winter of...
Jan 17, 2018
Fagus grandifolia A large beech tree overlooks an old Chickasaw Indian trail that once ran near the Middle Fork of the Forked Deer River. According to historic researchers, this tree is the only known remaining tree in Tennessee that contains carvings from Daniel...
Jan 17, 2018
Quercus alba This white oak stands on the Old Walton Road, one of only two Middle Tennessee roads that nineteenth-century pioneers used as wagon roads. (The other was the Chattanooga–McMinnville Road.) The Old Walton Road between Brotherton and Buck Mountain was part...
Jan 17, 2018
Juniperus virginiana When Knoxvillian James McMillan planted dozens of red cedar trees along both sides of his 600-acre farm in 1844, he never envisioned that they would survive to become a living legacy of the area. Only about ten of the cedars remain today, but they...
