Better late than never this is the ride we took on The Fall Color Ride.
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary last named Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex (also called Brushy) was a large maximum-security prison in the town of Petros in Morgan County, Tennessee, operated by the Tennessee Department of Correction. It was established in 1896 and operated until 2009.
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary opened in 1896 in the aftermath of the Coal Creek War, an 1891 lockout of coal miners that took place in Coal Creek and Briceville, Tennessee, after miners protested the use of unpaid convict leasing in the mines. This labor conflict was eventually resolved in favor of the coal miners, with a bill passing the Tennessee state legislature to abolish the convict labor system, to be replaced by the Brushy Mountain Mine and Prison.The mountainous, secure site was located with the help of consulting geologists, and Brushy Mountain convicts built a railroad spur, worked the coal mines on site, operated coke ovens, or farmed. At the end of all the state's convict lease arrangements on January 1, 1896, some 210 of those prisoners became the first inmates of Brushy Mountain.
The original prison was a wooden structure also built by prisoner labor. It was replaced in the 1920s with a castle-like building constructed from stone mined by prisoners from a quarry on the property.As of 2008 Brushy Mountain was the oldest operating prison in Tennessee.
The prison is nearly encircled by rugged wooded terrain in a remote section of the Cumberland Plateau, adjacent to Frozen Head State Park and Natural Area. Escape attempts were infrequent and almost always unsuccessful. Perhaps the best-known escape attempt occurred on June 10, 1977, when James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., escaped with six other inmates by climbing over a fence. Ray was captured less than 58 hours later in rugged mountain terrain 8 1/2 miles from the prison. The prison was closed in 1972 after a strike by prison guards protesting unsafe working conditions. It reopened in 1976.Brushy Mountain was the only unionized prison in the state. The union worked closely with state legislators to improve the working conditions for correctional staff across the state. Under governor Lamar Alexander attempts were made to squeeze the union out of existence but his efforts were fruitless. Additional attempts over the years were attempted but they proved fruitless also. Many efforts to close the prison were attempted long before the 2009 closure. In 1998 Brushy Mountain Prison was administratively joined with Morgan County Correctional Complex. With the joining of the two institutions both prisons became unionized.
In the 1980s Brushy Mountain ended its long-standing function as a maximum security prison and assumed a mission as a classification facility. In its final operations, it had a capacity of 584 and was used as the state's reception/classification and diagnostic center for East Tennessee. It housed all custody levels of inmates, although it retained a maximum security designation due to the ninety six bed maximum security annex contained within the prison walls. These ninety six beds were used to house the state's most troublesome inmates.
C Block cell 28 … Home of James Earl Ray.
In addition to James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., notable inmates included Byron Looper, who was convicted in 2000 for the murder of State Senator Tommy Burks and began serving his life sentence at Brushy Mountain.George Hyatte, one of the perpetrators of the 2005 Kingston courthouse shooting, was imprisoned at Brushy Mountain at the time of that incident.
It's now a museum you can tour for $12.00 very cool place to check out and has its own distillery on site making moonshine for sale.
Mountain officially opened in 1896 in the aftermath of the bloody Coal Creek War and began operations as a convict-lease prison.
The Coal Creek War was itself part of a greater labor struggle across Tennessee that was launched against the state government's controversial convict-leasing system, which allowed the state prison system to lease convict labor to mining companies and other business enterprises.
After the Civil War, Tennessee, like other Southern states, struggled to find sources of revenue. Post-war railroad construction had opened up the state's coalfields to major mining operations, creating a large demand for cheap labor.
In 1866, the state began leasing its convicts to companies willing to pay for the inmates' housing in exchange for their labor, The effect on this practice was the suppression of employee wages in the open market across the state.
By the early 1890s, the citizen-miners revolted. The Coal Creek War erupted and the miners attacked and burned the state prison, stockades, and mines. Many miners and state militiamen were killed or wounded in a series of small-arms skirmishes with the prisoners between 1891 and 1892.
Seeing that the state's financial gains from convict-leasing had been erased by having to keep the militia in the field, the Governor and the legislature decided to let the convict-leasing contracts expire, and enacted legislation to build the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary and purchase land in Morgan County where convicts would mine coal directly for the state, rather than competing against the market with free labor. The prisoners built a railroad spur, operated the coke oven and in 1896 they built the original Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
Prison life was dangerous. There were a number murders by inmates lookin’ to settle a score, not to mention deadly accidents. But those weren’t the only tragedies. Disease also struck the prison. Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and pneumonia took many lives. In the early 1900's, 3/4 of the black men incarcerated at Brushy suffered from syphilis. They received poor medical treatment and were made to mine the coal and build the prison no matter what condition their health was in. If they weren’t willing to do the work, guards would beat them. Some, were beaten to death.
Just a few more pictures.
