This 800 pound bucket was originally built as a promotional exhibit by the Tennessee Red Cedar Woodenworks Company, a manufacturer of cedar buckets in Murfreesboro. The bucket resided in Murfreesboro, but was exhibited at the World's Columbian Expostion in Chicago in 1893 and at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. In 1950 the cedar bucket factory burned, and the bucket was sold to a local grocer, who kept in on display adjacent to the store. Around 1965 the bucket was auctioned off to an amusement park in Rossville, Georgia.
The bucket was brought back to Murfreesboro in 1976, where it is now on display in Cannonsburgh Village. For a while, Murfreesboro had a nickname of Bucket Town or Bucketville, but you rarely hear that anymore. For a long time, the bucket was kept in a large shelter gazebo enabling people to be able to walk up to it.
Unfortunately, tragedy befell the bucket on June 19, 2005. Arsonists set fire to the bucket almost nearly destroying the bucket. As you can see, you can't get close to it anymore, and this is the more intact side. the bucket is now blackened and splintered charcoal shards held together by metal bands.
The Bucket is about six feet tall, with a diameter of six feet at the base and 9 feet at the top.
Where is the bucket at now? The last time I went down to Cannonsburgh, it was nowhere to be seen. They did however have a sculpture of a hand made from some of the charred bits of the bucket in the museum there.
ReplyDeleteSuch a shame that some idiots feel the need to ruin something like this. My daughter and I had just visited and taken photos of it about a month before it burned. Such a shame.
I took this photo back in 2007 and haven't been back to Cannonsburgh since. It was somewhere in the middle and not hidden. Perhaps it's since been removed for better preservation.
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