Alabama Furniture Co. faded mural - Chattanooga

Everyday Bargains! Sofas Chairs Loveseats Sleepers Recliners - Cooke Mfg. Co.

The Alabama Furniture Co. store is located in the Glass Farm District in East Chattanooga at the TN17 intersection of Glass St. and Dodson Ave.

Happy Day Laundry Cleaners neon sign - Memphis

1-Day Service!
Located along Union Ave. (US70/79/64/TN1).
Photo taken at dusk.

The Parthenon

The Dip Dairy Freeze - Dover, TN

Located on US79 along the west side of Dover is this old fashioned hamburger & dessert fast food restaurant. On their menu are "Little Square Hamburgers" which I assume are similar to Krystals or White Castle. Instead of that, I ordered a "Large Hamburger." Yum.

The Children's Holocaust Memorial - Whitwell, TN

The small southern town of Whitwell made national headlines when a small school project grew into a major tribute to tolerance and a remembrance for the millions who died in Nazi concentration camps.

Whitwell is a small town in Marion County, TN. After the coal mines closed, the area became quite poor. What happened next may help change the perception of what rural life in the south is all about.

Without any indication of what was to come, it started simply enough in 1998 in a Whitwell Middle School History class discussing World War II. The teacher discussed how six million Jews were slaughtered in the Nazi camps and a student asked how big Six Million is. In a town of just a little over one thousand people, it's hard to imagine just how big six million really is. One student doing research discovered that people from Norway wore paper clips as a symbol of resistance against the Nazis.

The teacher thought it would be an interesting exercise to see if they could gather a few paper clips as a small sampling of how big six million could be. The students began a letter writing campaign asking various people to donate paper clips to the project. After a few thousand had come in, some reporters came to visit the school to see what was going on. Those reporters told about the school's project and told the story nationally. A couple of years after they had started, over 29 Million paper clips had been sent to the school.

The school began to ponder what they should do with all of the paper clips. A couple of Jewish reporters who stayed in contact with the school searched Germany and found a vintage rail car which had been used to transport Jewish captives to the camps. The railcar was transported by boat to Baltimore and CSX delivered the car to Chattanooga in 2001.

Many students and townspeople came together to make the memorial site a long-lasting tribute. 11 million of the paper clips were placed inside the rail car, remembering not only the Jews but all of the other groups that were also killed in the Nazi camps. This memorial was dedicated on Nov. 9, 2001.

A documentary was filmed about the project, a full length movie titled "Paper Clips." I highly recommend everyone interested in this memorial should see that film.

Edward Washington King House - Bristol, TN

Constructed in 1903, the E.W. King House is one of the few remaining homes from the beginning of the 20th Century in Bristol, and is an excellent example of Queen Anne architecture. The hill was the site of Fort Shelby which was an important Revolutionary War outpost. Today, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For more info: www.bristolhistoricalassociation.com/ewkinghouse.html

Southern GP30 #2594 Locomotive

Railfest is the annual celebration at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, TN. In addition to the featured Southern #630 Steam Locomotive were two diesel engines, this one and Southern FP7 #6133 which pulled visitors along the Missionary Ridge local throughout the day during the 2013 Railfest.

According to the TVRM website:
"General Motors Corporation’s Electro-Motive Division built the 2594 in 1962 for the Southern Railway. On loan from the Atlanta Chapter NRHS, it is known as a GP-30 and has over 2,000 horsepower. The engine would have been used in tandem with other diesel-electric locomotives to haul long freight trains across the country. Today, the 2594 hauls TVRM’s excursion trains and wears the same historic Southern Railway paint scheme as when it was new. "

You can see quite a thorough collection of photos of #2594, Steam #630, #6133, and other rolling stock on the grounds. This gallery is on my website here:
seemidtn.com/gallery/index.php?album=chattanooga%2Frailfe...

Limestone Quarry Cave & Lake - Erin, TN

Around 1870, the Lime industry began to flourish in Erin and Houston County. Several Limekilns were built in the area and several still remain. Limestone was loaded into the fire chambers of these kilns and was converted into a fine lime powder. It was the county's biggest industry until the 1940's when the high quality limestone was depleted.

The man-made cave you see here is one of the places where the Limestone was excavated. This hill / mountain was quarried for a long time. Then, as they continued to dig, they struck a spring, which caused the cave to flood the way it is today. (The water really is that shade of blue - no photoshopping on my part to get that color!) According to legend, as the water started to fill the cave rapidly, the crew had to get out quickly and left all of their equipment down there.

The cave has three openings and two of them are easy to get to. As you drive highway TN49 (Main Street in Erin) look for the Piggly Wiggly, and you can see the lake behind it. Behind the Piggly Wiggly, there are some parking spaces and a picnic table right near one of the cave openings. From these parking spaces, you can already see one cave opening, but it's not the best one to use. (There's a No Trespassing sign at this entrance, probably because of safety concerns. Picture #4 of the series shows the view from behind the sign.) Instead, you'll want to take the path that leads around to the right for the best entrance and view. from the entrance, if you turn around and look across the outside part of the lake, you can see one of the intact limekilns.

Boyhood Home of Carl Perkins

The legendary Carl Perkins was the King of Rockabilly and author of the song "Blue Suede Shoes."

His boyhood home is located along highway TN78 on the south side of Tiptonville, TN. Over the last decade, the area has been transformed into the city's visitor center with the addition of an old Illinois Central Caboose and a replica train station. TN78 has been renamed the Carl Perkins Highway. Perkins was born in Tiptonville on April 9, 1932.

Red Mail Pouch Tobacco barn in Kentucky

As I roam the backroads of Tennessee, it's the See Rock City barns that I find most often. When you travel further northeast, the Mail Pouch Tobacco barns are much more common. They seem to be all over the place in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and there are plenty in Kentucky. On most of these barns, The words "Treat Yourself to the Best" is painted in white letters on a black background. This barn is a rare variant where the background is red instead of black. This barn is up on a hill in Hart County, Kentucky on U.S. Highway 31E.

For more info about the Mail Pouch Tobacco barns, I recommend this website:
mailpouchbarnstormers.org

Pope's Cafe - Air Conditioned - Shelbyville, TN

I hear that they have the best food in the area. Unfortunately they were not open the day I was there in 2007, nor did they have their sign on. The sign does work, based on what I have seen from other flickr users.

The restaurant and sign are located on Shelbyville's town square across the street from the Bedford County Courthouse. Based on their interior, this cafe must have had some affiliation with Vandyland (a similar classic diner near the Vanderbilt campus which closed in 2006).

Shiloh Battlefield: Line of Cannons in a Field

The Battle of Shiloh was a major battle in the Western Theater of the Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in Hardin County Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river.

Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. The Confederates achieved considerable success on the first day, but were ultimately defeated on the second day.
On the first day of the battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the river and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west, hoping to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before the anticipated arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back to the northeast, in the direction of Pittsburg Landing. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest", defended by the men of Brig. Gens. Benjamin M. Prentiss's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries. Gen. Johnston was killed during the first day of fighting, and Beauregard, his second in command, decided against assaulting the final Union position that night.

Reinforcements from Gen. Buell and from Grant's own army arrived in the evening and turned the tide the next morning, when the Union commanders launched a counterattack along the entire line. The Confederates were forced to retreat from the bloodiest battle in United States history up to that time, ending their hopes that they could block the Union advance into northern Mississippi.

Today, the area around Pittsburg Landing and the Shiloh Church is maintained as the Shiloh National Military Park under the oversight of the United States National Park Service. Located in the park is also the Shiloh National Cemetery where all the Union soldiers have been interred. The entire park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

Visiting the park can be an all day affair. Starting in the visitor center with a museum and bookstore, from there one can tour the cemetery. There is a self guided auto tour that points out about 20 locations at the park. Also inside the park is the Shiloh Indian Mounds, a historic burial ground from centuries ago. All in all, monuments, canons and markers are everywhere. I felt there were too many pictures for me to put them all on flickr, so I set up a gallery on my website with 130 pictures which you can see here:
seemidtn.com/gallery/index.php?album=west-tennessee%2Fshiloh

Cherokee Co. Courthouse - Murphy, NC

In the early 1890s, a grand courthouse was built in Murphy at this site. Despite being made of brick, it burned down in the mid 1920s, the third time this had happened in Cherokee County. When this courthouse was built, the most important thing was to make sure this one would be fireproof.



This courthouse is made out of unpolished blue marble, and is distinct as the only North Carolina courthouse made of marble quarried in its own county. (side note: most every description of this place highlights the native marble, so it must be really important to them.) The courthouse was dedicated in November, 1927. The courthouse also features a massive eight-sided tower, with 4 clocks and a bell on the inside with the top 132 feet high. Today, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

St. Joseph Catholic Church - St. Joseph, TN

From Wikipedia:
St. Joseph Church is a historic Roman Catholic church on Spring Street in St. Joseph, Tennessee.

The Roman Catholic church in St. Joseph was established in 1872. Its first church building was a small frame structure located near the current church. It housed a parochial school for many years and was being used for storage as of 1984.

The current church building is a large structure built by in 1885 by the church's parishioners from ashlar cut stone that they had quarried at a nearby site. It has a stucco exterior and a square bell tower with a short octagonal steeple that is roofed with tin shingles. It has an unusually elaborate interior that is largely the work of John Sliemers, who served as the local parish priest from 1901 to 1903 and from 1914 to 1934. Both the main altar and side altars have elaborate carvings, while lathe-turned balusters support the chancel rail and the rear gallery. Religious scenes are depicted in stained-glass windows and in paintings on the interior walls.

The 1885 church building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Valentine Sevier home - Greeneville, TN

This is the oldest house in Greeneville, built sometime around 1795 by Sevier, who was a local political leader and philanthropist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At one time, the home was owned by President Andrew Johnson whose final home is just across the street down the block. Later the house was owned by the O'Keefe family where Quincy Marshall O'Keefe and Edith O'Keefe Susong became the only mother and daughter in the TN Newspaper Hall of Fame.

See Rock City - World's 8th Wonder - Barn now gone

There's several commonly seen Rock City barns in and around Sevierville, and before it was removed a few years ago this one might have been the least frequently seen. Vacationers coming from the east travel along US 411. I think in the 80's, the Dolly Parton Highway was built to accommodate the growing traffic. It runs parallel to Old TN Highway 35, the old Newport Highway. This barn is located along the old highway.

Also located in the area is the Old Covered Bridge.

A couple of years ago I spotted This picture. It is the remains of the barn I photographed and it's now located inside the Ole Smokey Moonshine Distillery in Gatlinburg.

Orchard Knob: Pennsylvania Union Soldier Statue

With the Civil War battles in and around Chattanooga, the oft overlooked Orchard Knob is a small historic battlefield with good news and bad news. The good news is it is rich with history, with numerous interesting monuments all within a short distance of each other. The bad news is it's located in what many would consider a bad part of town, so you might not want to go by yourself. I'm willing to drive most anywhere, but here there's not a convenient place to park (unless parking on the street is ok, and I don't know if it is). Still, I wouldn't go to the top unless I hid the valuables in my car and went with a buddy. All of the monuments photographed here were seen near the street, but someday I'd like to go to the top where the monuments are quite grand.

Today, the site is under the oversight of the National Park Service as part of the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park. For the full story of what happened here during the Civil War:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga_Campaign#Orchard_Knob

To see my other Orchard Knob photos:
www.flickr.com/photos/brent_nashville/tags/orchardknob/

Loudon County Courthouse - Loudon, TN

from the historical marker:
Loudon County, first named Christiana, was created in 1870 from portions of Roane, Monroe and Blount counties. Construction of this building was begun soon afterwards, being built by brothers Ira N. Clarke and J. Wesley Clarke.
National Register of Historic Places App. 1975

Loudon County is one of those rare counties that has only had one courthouse, ever. This courthouse was completed in 1872 for $7,000 and today looks very similar to the way it did 140 years ago.

The Courthouse has a tall two story central section, with two lower two story wings. The central section has a pair of main doors with a single door on either wing. The facade is enriched by brick piers which are rusticated on the first story, plus a horizontal band between the stories, and corbelled brickwork beneath the end gables and center pediment. There is a deep bracketed cornice located at the rood eave.

The main section has a low hip roof, topped by a square central cupola. (The cupola has changed over the years, as looking at an older photo, it appears to have a clock face on all four sides.) Both wings have gabled roofs.

Oldham Theater - Winchester, TN

The Oldham Theater is a great looking old-fashioned small town square theater with well-preserved marquee and neon, still living up to it's 1950's grandeur.

Cumberland River Pedestrian Bridge

There are 15 bridges that cross the Cumberland River in Nashville, and this one is the newest after it opened in 2008. It is one of two pedestrian bridges, but the first one built specifically for that purpose. In it part of the Nashville Greenway system connecting Two Rivers Park on the south to Shelby Bottoms on the north. For more info: www.americantrails.org/resources/structures/Cumberland-Ri...

Choates Creek Methodist Church

Sign says founded in 1854. I wonder how old the building is. Seen in Giles County along old US64, and their cemetery is to the right

Alderson's Cleaners Neon Sign

Drive-in cleaners. Columbia, TN

Confederate Soldier Monument - Princeton, KY

The Confederate Soldier Monument in Caldwell is a historic statue located on the Caldwell County Courthouse lawn in the county seat of Princeton, Kentucky, United States. It was erected in 1912 by the Tom Johnson Chapter No. 886 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy

The entire 15-foot-tall (4.6 m) monument is made of granite; mostly gray granite, but with some white granite. The southward-facing statue has been said to be "defiant", with its back to the North, its defiant gaze, and its proud mustache.

For the full story:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Soldier_Monument_in_Cal...

Hardeman County Courthouse - Bolivar, TN

There have been three courthouses in Bolivar. The first was a log structure built in 1824, but three years later it was moved and expanded into a house, which still stands today. The second courthouse was built in 1827 of brick and also placed in the town square. During the Civil War, Union General Samuel D. Sturgis ordered the entire town to be razed and the courthouse as well as many homes were destroyed in an 1864 fire.

A new Courthouse was needed, so the third and current courthouse was completed in 1868 in the same location. The two story brick building features a pedimented portico with four Corinthian Columns atop an arched brick entrance-way. Other features include a rusticated stone base and a square clock tower with a bell atop the center of the roof. In 1955, three story brick wings were added on either side.

About 20 years ago, the trees in front of the courthouse were planted, so pictures from a couple of decades ago show architectural details better. Around the Square, Market Street is US64 and Main Street is TN18/125. Warren Street on the East Side had recently undergone a renovation and may be pedestrian only now. In front of the courthouse is a bust of Simon Bolivar, for whom the town was named, which was presented as a gift from Venezuela. Today, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Bolivar Court Square Historic District.

Trinity Music City sign (at the old Twitty City) - Hendersonville

Conway Twitty had a mansion in Hendersonville, TN off highway US31E, and built an entertainment complex around it called Twitty City. After Twitty's death, the complex was purchased by the religious televison station Trinity Broadcasting Network.

By the sign, it looks like Diamond Rio was scheduled to perform here soon after the picture was taken.

Strand Theater - Tiptonville, TN

Located along Main Street (TN21), the Strand was a longtime fixture in the the community and after a few decades of being closed, it has recently reopened.

The theater originally opened in 1915 and could seat 521. The theater closed in the mid 60s where the theater was used as a Masonic hall for four decades. In 2009, after being refurbished, the theater is open again. Here is an article from the local newspaper about the reopening:
www.stategazette.com/story/1589210.html

Morning Fog and Lookout Mountain

It's a few minutes after sunrise and there is a fog that permeates through Chattanooga. This picture is taken from the top corner room at the Downtown Marriott Convention Center in 2004.

First United Methodist Church - Columbia, TN

The First United Methodist Church is located along 7th street (US412/TN99) in downtown Columbia.