Blount County Rock City Barn

Located along highway U.S. 129. Today, anyone who rides along the Tail of the Dragon will see it.

Flickr user tnserose contacted me and told me that her grandfather owned this barn. How cool!

This is now one of 87 different Rock City Barns I have photographed and uploaded to Flickr in my Rock City Barns set. People often ask me how I've found so many of them. I have drawn from many resources such as books and web sites and sometimes luck, but there's not really one "go to" place to find them all. Well, now on my website, I have tried to create a one stop source for the locations of all of the barns I've been to. On my Map of Rock City Barns page, I have plotted each barn on a Google Map.

Robert Penn Warren Birthplace Museum - Guthrie, KY

According to the marker:
Robert Penn Warren - 1905-1989
A native of Guthrie, Warren was one of the nation's most prolific writers, a world-renowned man of letters. Graduate of Vanderbilt Univ., summa cum laude, 1925; member of the Fugitives (writers group). Rhodes scholar at Oxford, 1928-1930; and twice a Guggenheim Fellow. He was professor of English at La. State, Minnesota, and Yale universities.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren

Montgomery County Courthouse Bell

This 4200 pound bell was put in the clock tower of the courthouse when the courthouse was rebuilt following the 1900 fire. During the 1999 tornado, the bell came crashing to the ground and they decided to place it on the plaza grounds instead of putting it back int he reconstructed tower. It was built by the MC Shane Bell Foundry of Baltimore, MD in 1900.

Caney Fork & Western Caboose

The Caney Fork and Western Railroad (CFWR) is a shortline railroad operating since 1983 from a connection with CSX at Tullahoma to McMinnville, TN, 61 miles along old NCStL tracks. Currently the railroad is a subsidiary of Ironhorse Resources. Principal commodities include lumber, steel, fertilizer, grain, propane, and carbon black, generating approximately 1,350 annual carloads. This caboose is seen parked at their main office in McMinnville.

Church of the Messiah - Pulaski, TN

This Episcopal church was built in 1887 with a style similar to a 19th Century English parish church. The cost for building the church was $6,000 and was donated by Governor John C. Brown who lived at Colonial Hall on the same block. Today, the church building is on the National Register of Historic Places, significant for its architecture.

Stewart County Iron Industry marker

This quite thorough marker is located at the Stewart County Courthouse in Dover, TN.
You'll need to pull up the photo in original size if you want to attempt to read it. It's a map of the entire county and where to find all of the historic iron furnaces.

Shelby Park Mockingbird - Nashville

This Mockingbird Statue was placed at Shelby Park in honor of the park's 100th birthday in 2012. Lawrence Argent created the artwork out of black Chinese Granite and Stainless Steel. The Mockingbird is one of Tennessee's State Symbols as the official state bird.

The Colonel's Mandolin Band LP

Favorite Old Church Hymns recorded by The Colonel's Mandolin Band for the glorification of Christ.

This vintage record album was seen at the mini-museum inside of the first KFC, otherwise known as Sanders Cafe, in Corbin, KY. Personally, I prefer the beauty of the human voice, but I bet I would find this album quite interesting. More than anything, just seeing this reminds me how the times have changed. Today, is there any well-known fast food chain other than Chik-Fil-A that would attempt such a recording?

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.

Cheatham Lock & Dam

Cheatham Lock & Dam is downstream from Ashland City along the Cumberland River in Cheatham County.

From the US Army Corps of Engineers website:
www.lrn.usace.army.mil/Locations/NavigationLocks/Cumberla...

Cheatham Lock is located at Mile 148.6 on the Cumberland River in Cheatham County, Tennessee and is approximately 10 miles northwest of Ashland City, Tenn. Cheatham Lock is open to pass navigation traffic 24 hours-a-day, 365 days a year.

The 67-mile reservoir created by Cheatham Dam provides Nashville and middle Tennessee with a stable water supply and access to the entire Mississippi River system and the Intracoastal Waterway and plays an integral part in various commodities being transported to the region by water.

Cheatham Lock and Dam was authorized by Congress in 1946 as a navigation project to enhance the development of the Cumberland River Basin. Construction on the Lock was begun in 1949. Cheatham Lock was opened to navigation traffic on August of 1951. The lock chamber is 800-foot long and 110-foot wide. During normal lake levels, the lock will lift a boat 26-foot from the river below the dam to the lake above the dam. The lock releases over 17 million gallons of water each time is emptied.

Due to geological conditions in the area, the site selected for construction presented unique challenges on designing the project. This is the only lock in the Nashville District that was designed to flood; the lock walls had to be built according to the elevations of the surrounding land. Thus, create a design so that flood waters could flow over the structure with minimal damage when waters receded.

The lock has been submerged on several occasions, but the historical record-breaking flood of May 2010 submerged the lock and operations building in water almost fifteen feet deep. This far exceeded the designed limits for the structure and caused the Nashville District to perform a complete electrical overhaul and hydraulic rehab of the lock. Temporary repairs and clean-up were made and the lock was able to reopen to navigation traffic under restricted operation approximately 14 days after the waters receded. It was the middle of June 2010 before the lock returned to 24 hour operations.

The previous solar event I could see in Nashville

Happy eclipse day!

June 5, 2012 was the last time I tried to photograph the sun. On that day, the planet Venus came between us and the sun. If Venus was a lot bigger, I guess you could call this an eclipse, but the sun was so bright that you couldn't see this unless you had a solar filter. Since it's not an eclipse, the Astronomy term is Transit of Venus.

If you think a solar eclipse is rare, the Transit of Venus will not happen again until 2117. However, there will be a Transit of Mercury on Nov 11, 2019, but it will not be visible in the United States.

See Incline Here / Coca-Cola sign

Along the Lookout Mountain Scenic Highway (TN148) is a spot where the street crosses over Chattanooga's historic Incline Railroad. Along that bridge is a pedestrian scenic overlook. The parking spaces for this overlook are provided by Mountain Memories, a gift shop.

Cannon Courthouse & Car Show

My wife and I were travelling to Woodbury, TN one Saturday afternoon in the fall. We stopped at a restaurant on the town square, and while we were eating, a bunch of classic cars pulled up to the square and a car show broke out. A friend from town says these shows are frequent in Woodbury.

The Car in the photo is a Camaro Z28. 2017 is the 50th year of the Camaro.

Johnny Cash Museum neon sign

During Cash's lifetime, his museum was located at his business office in Hendersonville, TN and was known as "House of Cash." This modern museum is one of the top museums for country music fans in Nashville where it is located along 3rd Ave. in downtown. This neon sign was not here on my previous walk through the area in the Spring of 2015
www.johnnycashmuseum.com/

Craighead-Jackson House - Knoxville, TN

Located in downtown Knoxville next to the Blount Manison. There lots of good info on the Wikipedia article:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craighead-Jackson_House

Higgins Moonlite Drive-In

In Woodbury, TN on U.S. Highway 70S and it is still open for business. My wife and I went to screen 1, the first time we'd ever been to a drive in.

www.themoonlitedrivein.com/

Germantown, TN Train Depot at Night

Tracks were first laid through Germantown by the Memphis & Charleston Railroad in the 1850's. This depot was built by Southern Railway as a replica in 1948 to recreate the depot that was here in 1868.

On the front of the building is a plaque that reads "Restoration by Heritage Woman's Club 1986." Today, the building houses the offices for the Tennessee Shakespeare Company.

Mitchum Rexall Drugs neon sign

Erin, TN

Christ Church Episcopal - Rugby, TN

Rugby is a small community along the Cumberland Plateau in Morgan County, founded by British Immigrants in 1880. The Rugby Colony was designed to be a Utopian community, but the design failed in less than a decade. Still a few townspeople and their descendants lived in the area over the next several decades. In the 1960s, residents, friends and descendants of Rugby began restoring the original design and layout of the community, preserving surviving structures and reconstructing others.

The Christ Church Episcopal was established on October 5, 1880, and initially used the original Rugby schoolhouse for services. The current building was built in the Carpenter Gothic style in 1887 by Cornelius Onderdonk, who constructed many of the original buildings in Rugby, and consecrated by Episcopal bishop Charles Quintard in 1888. The church's alms basin was designed by English carpenter Henry Fry, who had previously done work for various churches in the London area. The church's reed organ, built in 1849, is one of the oldest in the United States. The Christ Church congregation has met here regularly since 1887.

Old and New Bridgeport, AL river bridge

This is an important spot for railroads in the south as all of the CSX trains that run from Nashville to Chattanooga cross through here. I can't find any details on how old the old bridge is, but the river was first crossed here by NCStL in 1852.

The bridges here cross the Tennessee River. One of the reasons this spot was picked is there is an approx 1000 ft. island 2/3 of the way to the other side at this spot. The tracks cross the wider 1000 ft. portion of the river with what you see in the foreground, and then there is a smaller 500 ft. lift bridge in the background.

The lift bridge was placed here in 1981 from unused train line elsewhere. It's rather inaccessible unless you're a railroad employee who takes a gravel road on the other side.



Unfortunately, the pedestrian bridge clearly marks it's for employees only, which is a shame.

I'm not sure how new the new bridge on the left is. It's at least newer than 1995. On GreenFrog.com, (a great website for railfan videos) they have a CSX video from Chattanooga to Nashville, filmed in the mid 90's and featuring the bridges here before the new one was built.

Sequatchie Cave

Sequatchie Cave State Natural Area is located in the town of Sequatchie, TN in Marion County. The calf-deep pure waters of Owen Spring Branch flow out of the mouth of the cave. When the water levels are low, people have explored about a mile into the cave. There are also a couple of endangered species that live here, the Caddisfly and the Royal Snail.

The City of Sequatchie was developed because it is close to the waters here. In the 1850's, the landowners gave the land to the city. In the late 1920's (I think) the area was opened as a roadside park complete with a couple of concrete picnic tables and large boulders around the drive. (The driveway to the park is along Valley View Highway which I believe was an original segment of the Dixie Highway in the area.) While the park is still maintained today by the county Highway Department, it is also listed as a State Natural Area. On the day of my visit in the Winter of 2013, there was a posted sign that the entering the cave was off limits as all state owned caves are closed indefinitely as researchers study the White nose Syndrome of bats.

Ledford Mill

Ledford Mill is an 1884 gristmill listed on the National register of Historic Places. The nearest city is Tullahoma, sometimes listed as Wartrace, but is in the corner of Moore County, so it's technically in Lynchburg. Visually, it's an unusual setting for a Middle Tennessee Mill. The road leads right up to the door on an upper floor of this mill in the narrow valley.

Mills need a place to harness the power of water, and are usually situated at a waterfall or a dam. This place has both. An old large metal pipe runs from the top of the dam of Shipman's Creek to the mill. a path with a wooden pedestrian bridge leads to a bench where you can sit and watch the 20 foot waterfalls in a peaceful setting. With the lake above the dam, you can see the fish which are considered pets at the mill.

Like most gristmills, it went out of business decades ago. However, the mill was restored in 1996 by innkeepers John & Mildred Spear who operate the mill as a three room bed & breakfast. During business hours, the mill is open as a gift shop / antique store. Visitors are allowed to look around but when the paying overnight guests arrive, they get the area to themselves.

Old Sara Lee Bread Billboard Sign - Knoxville, TN

Located in South Knoxville at a building along the Chapman Highway that is (or was) their building. At the top of the building was a long sign with their slogan "Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee." Part of that sign fell off and you can see what's left of the old sign: "Take Home..."

In 2017, Kern's Bakery where this is located was added to the National Registry of Historic Places. Sara Lee operated here from 1989 to 2012.

Site of Sulphur Dell - Nashville

When the Nashville Sounds announced plans to build a new baseball stadium First Tennessee Park, they picked the site of Nashville first baseball stadium.

Sulphur Dell was the site of baseball for nearly 100 years. For over 60 years, it was the home of the Nashville Vols minor league baseball team. Before the stadium permanently closed in 1963, it had been longest continually used site for baseball in America. This fact was even commemorated in the scaffolding sign outside the ballpark which can be seen in the photo at this link:
www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/cb52b0c41f0ef904859ba2d0bce00055...

At the new First Tennessee Park, which opened at the same site over 50 years later, they pay tribute to the site's history. This sign recreates the iconic sign of the original. It is located on the back of the green center field hitter's backdrop, so if you attend a game and walk all the way around the stadium, you can see this too.

Cheatham County Bicentennial Trail Bridge

This bridge was originally built in 1901 by the Tennessee Central Railway as they extended their rail line from Nashville west to Clarksville. Around 1990, the tracks west of Ashland City were abandoned and soon many people wanted to convert the old rail-bed and this bridge to a pedestrian trail. With a partnership between the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and the Cheatham County Parks Department, the Cumberland River Bicentennial Trail was built and it utilized the old bridge. (The trail parallels the Cumberland River but actually crosses Sycamore Creek.) The iron Parker through truss bridge with a length of 550 ft. was built by American Bridge Co.

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For other views of this bridge: www.flickr.com/search/?sort=relevance&text=cumberland...
For the full story: www.railstotrails.org/news/recurringfeatures/trailmonth/a...
or: www.cumberlandrivertrail.org/history.htm

Seattle Wheel - Williamson County Fair

This is the "Seattle Wheel" Ferris wheel at the 2006 Williamson County Fair, but back for the 2017 fair. It is owned and Operated by Drew Operations, but was designed for the 1960's Seattle World's Fair. If you've ever seen video from that world's fair, you've seen one like this before. It is over 90 ft. tall.