Sunday, April 17, 2022
Hi Blog!
For years, the largest employer in this part of Tennessee was the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Established in 1896 as a means to provide convict labor for logging and coal mining operations in the Appalachian Mountains, Brushy Mountain was the last stop for Tennessee's most wayward souls. The last prisoners were relocated in 2009 and the facility reopened as a museum, restaurant, distillery and concert venue in 2018.
By 1896, inmates were building an onsite railroad spur, as well as the original wooden prison structure, with their own hands. Between the ongoing violence, deadly mining accidents and chronic illness, life inside Brushy was precarious to say the least. Diseases were rampant, including tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and syphilis – which alone affected 3/4 of the black prisoners. Beyond generally poor medical care and treatment, inmates were routinely beaten for “underproducing” in the mines, despite their dire health conditions, and many died as a result.
By 1931, Brushy housed 976 men, roughly 300 more than its capacity. Overcrowding was so prevalent and persistent, it drew comparisons to conditions inside the infamous Siberian prisons of the Soviet Union. Plans were drawn for a new structure to be made of reinforced concrete and they made convicts break sandstone out of the nearby quarry to build the new prison. Constructed in the shape of a Greek cross, it stood four stories high, boasted battlements atop and by 1934 was surrounded by an 18-foot stone wall.
Our first stop was the Distillery Tasting Room, Restaurant and Gift Shop where we purchased our tickets for the self-guided tour. Nearby, an old prison bus waited for the next load of prisoners. The destination listed on the front of the bus - Death Row!
We decided to walk up from the Gift Shop and enjoy the beautiful Spring weather. The recent rains filled the small mountain creeks that tumbled down the hillside. Brushy Mountain Distillery uses this fresh mountain water to craft its spirits.
The tour started in the museum, where we watched a 20 minute video about the history of the prison. Several former guards and inmates were interviewed about their time at Brushy. After the film, we toured the Artifacts Room which contained various display cases; the most interesting was the homemade weapons case.
Mining remained the sole mission of the prison until the 1960’s. In 1969, Brushy was reclassified as primarily maximum-security when 100 beds were added to house lesser offenders “outside the walls.” Many of the new minimum-security inmates were entrusted with jobs serving the outside community, such as participating in the Petros Voluntary Fire Department, which operated 24/7 between 1971 and 1994.
By the middle of the century, Brushy’s reputation as the last stop for the worst criminals had become legend. If you wore out your welcome at another prison or committed some unspeakable crimes, you ended up at Brushy. Once in Brushy, if you still misbehaved there was one more last stop - The Hole!
If you were sent to The Hole, you spent your days in darkness. Inmates went blind after three days and needed to have a guide for the first week they came out, before their vision came back. Inside one of the cells in The Hole was a video of one of the former occupants.
In 1957, after finally shutting down The Hole, the State built D-block to keep the nastiest inmates isolated from the rest. It just happens that D-block was built on the site of the old “death house,” where the bodies of dead inmates were kept until they were given back to their families or buried at the pauper’s cemetery up on the hill there.
Because of its brutal history, Brushy is a hotbed of paranormal activity. Jaime Brock is Brushy’s Lead Paranormal Investigator. She focuses her paranormal contact on obtaining firm evidence utilizing many techniques and specialized equipment. If you are brave enough, you can schedule an evening Paranormal Tour. You can even spend the night if you dare.
James Earl Ray was Brushy Mountain's most notable inmate. Even before he confessed to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1969, Ray’s life seemed to bend the wrong way. When he was a kid, his daddy passed bad checks and had the family assume false names to avoid the law. Ray joined the Army at the close of World War II and served in Germany, but was discharged for “ineptness and a lack of adaptability.”
In 1977, after about 8 years in the prison, Ray and six others climbed over the wall using a 16-foot ladder made of salvaged pipe. The FBI and US Marshall Service swarmed into Morgan County, and a little more than two days later, local trackers and hound dogs found him exhausted and buried under leaves trying to mask his scent. He’d only made it fa ew miles from the prison walls.
Pictured below is the wall Ray and his fellow inmates climbed over.
In 1981, three inmates stabbed Ray 22 times. Some say it was payback for the assassination. Some say it was another of Ray’s schemes, a way to get publicity and a new trial for what he claimed was a false confession. Ray did leave Brushy for good in 1992, and died at a state facility in Nashville six years later.
One day back in the early ‘70s, a young deer fell off of the cliff into the yard. The inmates decided to keep the deer as a sort of “pet,” and named the deer “Geronimo” on account of how it came to be in the prison. Geronimo was tamed and liked to chew on unlit cigarettes. When labor disputes shut down Brushy from ‘72 to ’75, the inmates were moved to Nashville, but Geronimo stayed behind with its future uncertain. The inmates voted to move Geronimo to Nashville’s prison. The state paid to move the deer to Nashville with its friends.
The cafeteria was located on the second floor of the main prison building. To improve the quality of life at the prison, the warden allowed the prisons to paint wildlife pictures on the walls. We looked for a picture of Geronimo, but didn't find one. Kathy liked this rainbow trout about to take a fly!
After the last prisoners left in 2009, it took until 2013 before a plan came together to create the current museum complex. By 2018, they were ready to greet their first visitors. Covid caused a two year delay in their development, but as restrictions lift and visitors return, plans are in the works for more events.
After the tour, we returned to the tasting room and restaurant. We checked their tasting offerings and were disappointed they didn't make a gin. We passed on the moonshine samples and decided to use all our calories for lunch.
Tomorrow we head to Cadiz, Kentucky and hope to explore the Kentucky Lakes. Stay tuned!
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