Historic Sites
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Alex Haley Home and Museum
On the porch of this house, Haley heard the family stories that inspired him to write Roots.
more like this »Ames Plantation
The 18,430-acre Ames Plantation is the site of several 19th century cotton plantations.
more like this »Andrew Johnson National Historic Site
The Andrew Johnson National Historic Site includes the tailor shop where Johnson worked in the 1830s and two of his homes, both restored, one containing many of his personal belongings.
more like this »Beale Street Historic District
It was here in the early 1900s that W.C. Handy first popularized and published the blues, a unique African-American contribution to American music.
more like this »Belle Meade Plantation
Known as "Queen of Tennessee Plantations," the Harding family's Belle Meade Plantation, once over 5,300 acres, was world renowned as a thoroughbred stud farm in the nineteenth century.
more like this »Blount Mansion
In 1792, the four-room Blount Mansion became the talk of the town. Knoxvillians were amazed as materials and furnishings were brought in over the mountains for the home of William Blount, an influential politician and businessman who signed the U.S. Constitution, drafted Tennessee's Constitution, and was the Governor of the Southwest Territory.
more like this »Cades Cove
Cades Cove is one of several special communities in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park exhibiting reconstructions of the pioneer way of life.
more like this »Carter House
The Carter House commemorates the tragic Civil War Battle of Franklin, said to have been one of the bloodiest in the nineteenth century.
more like this »Chester Inn
The Chester Inn, built in 1797 by Dr. William P. Chester of Berlin, Pennsylvania, has earned a reputation as the first boarding house in eastern Tennessee
more like this »Chickamauga/Chattanooga National Military Park
In the fall of 1863, Union and Confederate forces met at Chickamauga Creek in one of the bloodiest battles in American history. The site includes the battlefields, the Fuller Gun collection, a multi-media presentation on the battles, the National Cemetery, and monuments to units on both sides.
more like this »Chucalissa Archaeological Site
Chucalissa is a working reconstruction of a 1,000-year-old Indian village that flourished along the eastern shore of the Mississippi River, with grass thatched huts, a temple, and a ceremonial burial ground.
more like this »Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum
This is the log cabin boyhood home of Cordell Hull, secretary of state under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose work toward the establishment of the United Nations won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.
more like this »Cragfont
Cragfont was the home of General James Winchester, a protagonist of the American Revolution, a pioneer in the Middle Tennessee wilderness, a soldier against indigenous Americans, a brigadier general in the War of 1812, and co-founder of the City of Memphis.
more like this »Ducktown Basin Museum and Burra Burra Mine Site
The Burra Burra Mine site consists of 10 buildings located on 17 acres and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places
more like this »Fort Donelson National Battlefield
This 558-acre battlefield off U.S. Highway 79 in Stewart County was the site of the North's first major victory of the Civil War, ultimately opening the gate for Union invasion into the Confederate heartland.
more like this »Governor John Sevier Home
John Sevier (1745-1815), early pioneer, Indian fighter, governor of the failed State of Franklin, and first governor of Tennessee, built a plantation home, which he called Marble Springs, when he came to the state capital, Knoxville, in 1796.
more like this »Graceland
Home of world-famous singer and movie star Elvis Presley, Graceland was built about 1940 by Grace Moore.
more like this »Hotel Halbrook Railroad & Local History Museum
The Hotel Halbrook Railroad & Local History Museum will be restored to reflect life in the early 20th century, a story of the defining era for the Dickson community. The 1912 building is one of the few remaining examples of a rural Tennessee railroad hotel.
more like this »Hunt-Phelan House
This 16-room reddish-brick house in the Federal style was built in two stages, the first in 1830 by George H. Whyett.
more like this »Jack Daniel's Distillery
Founded in 1866, Jack Daniel's is the oldest registered distillery in the nation, famous for its sour mash whiskey.
more like this »James K. Polk Ancestral Home
This house was built by Samuel Polk in 1816, when his son James K. Polk was twenty-one years old. It was here that James K. Polk began his legal and political career, living in this house until he was inaugurated 11th president of the United States in 1845.
more like this »Jubilee Hall of Fisk University
Jubilee Hall, an example of the High Victorian Gothic style, was completed in 1875, the first permanent building erected for the higher education of African Americans in the United States.
more like this »Mansker's Station & Bowen-Campbell House
These adjoining sites illustrate the early phase of Middle Tennessee exploration and settlement. Mansker's Station is the reconstructed 1779 frontier fort established by long hunter and explorer Kaspar Mansker. The forted station is a living history museum presenting scenes of pioneer life in the early Cumberland River settlements
more like this »Natchez Trace Parkway
Native American trail between Nashville and Mississippi, later used by settlers and traders.
more like this »Parthenon
Nashville's Parthenon is the only full-sized reproduction of the original Parthenon, a temple built by the Greeks in Athens during the 5th century B.C.
more like this »Pinson Mounds State Park
Pinson Mounds is one of the most significant Native American archaeological sites in Tennessee. The mounds were constructed during the Middle Woodland period (ca. A.D. 1-500).
more like this »Reelfoot Lake
Tennessee's only large naturally-formed lake, Reelfoot was created by the violent New Madrid earthquakes in 1811.
more like this »Rhea County Courthouse
In 1925, the Rhea County Courthouse was the scene of the famous Scopes Evolution Trial, in which John Thomas Scopes, a Dayton high school teacher, was tried for teaching that human beings evolved from a lower order of animals.
more like this »Rock Castle
A blend of the Federal and Georgian architectural styles, the house was once the center of a 3,140-acre plantation which today is but 18 acres.
more like this »Rocky Mount
This frontier home, built ca. 1770, was the Capitol of the Territory South of the River Ohio (the area that is now Tennessee) from 1790-1792
more like this »Rugby
Rugby, a rural English colony founded by Thomas Hughes in the 1880s, was established to provide homes and livelihood in the United States for the younger sons of English gentry.
more like this »Ryman Auditorium
Known as the "Mother Church of Country Music," Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, designed by architect H.C. Thompson, was originally built as a religious meeting hall and was called the Union Gospel Tabernacle. The Ryman became the home of the Grand Ole Opry, famous country and western music show, in 1943 and served as such until March of 1974.
more like this »Sam Houston Schoolhouse
The Sam Houston Schoolhouse is named for the soldier, statesman, and pioneer from East Tennessee. Built of hewn poplar logs, it is representative of field schools of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
more like this »Shiloh National Military Park
This battlefield is the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, where Union and Confederate casualties totaled 23,746.
more like this »Sparta Rock House
The small, stone Rock House, originally built to collect tolls on a private road, was built between 1835 and 1839 by Barlow Fiske, who operated a stage coach inn and stables nearby. It played an important role in the early development of Tennessee's transportation system.
more like this »Tennessee State Capitol
A masterpiece of Greek Revival architecture, the Tennessee Capitol was completed in 1859 and is one of the oldest working capitols in the United States.
more like this »Tennessee State Museum
One of the largest state museums in the nation with more than 60,000-sq.-ft. of permanent exhibits and a 10,000-sq.-ft. changing exhibition hall. The museum's interpretive exhibits begin 15,000 years ago with prehistoric humans and continue through the early 1900s with special sections on Native American Indians, explorers, pioneers, the Antebellum age, the Civil War, and the beginning of a new century.
more like this »The Graphite Reactor (X-10) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Graphite Reactor, a National Historic Landmark, is located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The reactor was used as a pilot plant and for producing the first measurable quantities of the man made element plutonium.
more like this »Tipton-Haynes
The Tipton-Haynes site represents various periods of Tennessee history, from pre-colonial times to Reconstruction. An ancient buffalo trail ran near the site of the "bold spring," and the grounds were frequented successively by the Woodland Indians, the Cherokees, and European explorers and traders.
more like this »Victorian Village
In the area of Adams Avenue in Memphis, a number of landmark 19th century homes have been saved from destruction by interested citizens. Homes range in time from ca. 1846 to the 1890s, and in style from Neo-classical through Late Gothic Revival.
more like this »Wynnewood
Wynnewood is the largest extant log structure in Tennessee. It was built in 1828 by A. R. Wynne, William Cage, and Stephen Roberts as a stagecoach inn on the Nashville-Knoxville Road.
more like this »York Grist Mill/Home of Alvin C. York
In this old grist mill, built on the Wolf River in 1880, and in the house across the road, World War I hero Alvin C. York spent his last years.
more like this »Quick Links for Non-Residents
Hi. It appears that you are visiting us from outside of Tennessee. Listed below are links that were of interest to other non-residents. We hope that you find them helpful.