Place

Rocky Mount, the home of William Cobb, served as the first capitol of the Southwest Territory. William Blount, the governor of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, presided over the newly formed territory from 1790-92.…

“Rogana,” the historic name of the stone cottage built around 1800 by Irish immigrant and Tennessee pioneer Hugh Rogan, is located near Bledsoe’s Creek in eastern Sumner County. The building is a rare surviving example of American architecture that is…

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Ruby Falls is one of Chattanooga's major tourist attractions. Its entrance is situated in a medieval-style stone edifice, Cavern Castle, located on the side of Lookout Mountain along Scenic Highway, from whence…

A Victorian-era village at the northern tip of Morgan County, Rugby was founded by a company of British and American capitalists who cleverly traded on the popularity of Thomas Hughes, a noted English author and social reformer of the time,…

The Ruskin Cooperative Association (RCA) existed in Dickson County from 1894 until 1899. Established at Tennessee City, the colony soon moved five miles away to a site by a large cave on Yellow Creek which still bears the name Ruskin.…

Built as the Union Gospel Tabernacle between 1888 and 1892, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium gained international renown from 1943 to 1974 as home to the Grand Ole Opry, the premier live country music radio broadcast of Nashville station WSM. It is…

In 1792, according to tradition, a North Carolina Revolutionary War veteran named Andrew Kennedy settled with his family on a parcel of land along Little River near Maryville in Blount County. Sometime after his arrival in Tennessee, probably in 1794,…

The largest and most significant portion of the South Cumberland State Recreation Area is the Savage Gulf State Natural Area. Located on the Cumberland Plateau in Grundy County, Savage Gulf contains approximately 11,500 acres, and its wide ecological diversity has…

The only dwelling designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Tennessee is the Shavin House in Chattanooga. In 1949 newlyweds Gerte and Seamour Shavin contacted Frank Lloyd Wright to design a home for them on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. Wright (1870-1959),…

A noted feature of the Eastern Highland Rim landscape of Middle Tennessee is Short Mountain. Located in northeastern Cannon County, the mountain looms above adjacent portions of DeKalb and Warren Counties as well. Capped by Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks that have…

Of all historical housing forms found in Tennessee, the shotgun house is perhaps the least understood and most burdened with confusion and misconceptions. The shotgun sometimes represented the worst evidence of the treatment of the impoverished and, therefore, was viewed…

The Soloman Federal Building in Chattanooga exhibits the style known as "modernized" or "starved" classicism that became increasingly identified with American public architecture in the 1930s. The building, planned in 1931, built in 1932, and embellished with a courtroom mural…

The South Cumberland State Recreation Area (SCRA) is a unique park within the Tennessee park system as it combines separate natural areas, trails, state forests, and small wild areas within one management unit. Its headquarters and visitor center are on…

The Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, often called the Southwest Territory, was created by an act of Congress on May 26, 1790. The State of North Carolina had ceded the lands and waterways encompassed by…

Three miles east of Sparta along U.S. Highway 70 is the Sparta Rock House, built initially as a toll house and stage stop along a busy antebellum turnpike between Sparta and Crossville. It is considered a significant and rare artifact…

Maury County's landmark St. John's Episcopal Church, constructed between 1839 and 1842, exemplifies rural simplification of the prevailing Gothic Revival architectural style used in Episcopal churches of the antebellum South. Five sons of the North Carolina planter William Polk, who…

This Nashville landmark is one of the first Catholic Church buildings constructed in Tennessee and served as the Catholic Cathedral for almost seventy years. The oldest extant church building in downtown Nashville, St. Mary's dates to 1844-47. Its architect was…

St. Michael's Catholic Church, incorporating the state's oldest Catholic church building, began as a small log meeting house near Cedar Hill in Robertson County. Four families (the Byrnes, Redmonds, Traughbers and Watsons) who settled near Turnersville between 1838 and 1840…

The Mother Church of the Diocese of Tennessee, St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Franklin is the state's oldest Episcopal church and serves its oldest Episcopal congregation. Built with handmade bricks eighteen to twenty-four inches thick, the forty-by-eighty-three-foot church was organized…

A huge animal-shaped monolith standing beside the Avery Trace in Putnam County mystified the eighteenth-century travelers who first encountered it. McClain's History of Putnam County (1925) describes the figure as a "sphinx-like sculpture which may have belonged to a cultured…