You Can Visit This Once Abandoned Notorious Prison in East Tennessee
In Morgan County, near the tiny community of Petros – right in the shadow of the Cumberland Plateau- they’ve taken hell on Earth, shined it up and used it to market a peculiar concoction of horrid history, fabricated ghosts, mountain likker and classic Southern café dining.
For more than 100 years, Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary was well known as one of the worst places on Earth. For instance, something akin to the remote Siberian prisons in Russia but with presumably milder winters. From 1896 until it closed for good in 2009, Brushy was a dark mark on Tennessee’s reputation, a stain on its collective soul. The end of the line, they called it. It was the last stop for the doomed, the evil and the lost causes. It was brutal and deadly. There was very little hope for any soul that crossed its threshold.
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Having finally outlived its purpose, Brushy sat closed for almost a decade. Then, in 2018, a private ownership group bought the place. They cleaned it up a little and began offering tours. They opened a distillery selling End of the Line moonshine as well as Frozen Head vodka, Brushy Mountain double barrel whiskey and something called Brimstone, a cinnamon white whiskey that is significantly better than the original spirit produced at the prison, toilet wine.
There’s even a Southern American style café called the Warden’s Table. There, you can grab barbecue nachos just in case, after learning the tortured history of more than 100 years of prisoners, you’re feeling a mite peckish.
The Gates of Hell
Brushy’s history starts with the post-Civil War railroad boom. There was a massive demand for coal and operations flourished – as did the company town system. Essentially, coal towns – owned by the mining companies – would spring up. The workers would rent housing from the company, shop at the company store and be paid, not in actual money, but scrip which could only be spent at the company’s facilities.
The system led to a hard-to-escape form of indentured servitude. The items at the company store would be marked up, rent for housing would be above market price and the workers couldn’t earn actual money they could use anyplace else. They often ended the week owing more than they’d earned in the mines.
Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous line “I owe my soul to the company store” comes from this.
At the time, the only recompense the workers had came through collective labor. Meanwhile, post reconstruction, the state had a growing inmate population. Many of the inmates were former slaves who were given egregious sentences for petty crimes that arose from struggling to feed, house and clothe themselves. The mining companies partnered with the state to lease prisoners as cheaper labor that had less access to things like free will. The mining companies got cheaper labor that could bust the strikes. As a result, the state turned a costly prison population into a money-maker.
The Coal Creek War
In 1891, things came to a head with the Coal Creek War in nearby Anderson County. There was a lockout of miners and things turned bloody. The legislature banned the convict labor system and ordered the construction of Brushy Mountain. That way, the state could eliminate the middleman and use convicts in is own mining operation.
Even though the state was getting the benefits of inmate labor, it wasn’t doing much to care for its workforce.
“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. The Brushy website states, “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.”
Welcome to the End of the Line
By the 1920s, the prison was severely overcrowded and dangerous. A new facility on the site – this one made of concrete and built in the shape of a cross – opened in 1934. The facility remained mainly a mining operation into the ‘60s. However, it had a reputation as the place Tennessee inmates most feared. The other prisons would threaten non-conforming inmates with a trip to Brushy to get them in line. Two prisoners were killed in a rock fall in 1967, leading to a public outcry that put an end to the mines. In 1969, Brushy was reclassified as a maximum-security prison and became known as the end of the line.
James Earl Ray Escapes
Brushy Mountain’s most infamous inmate was Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin, James Earl Ray. Ray arrived at the facility in 1970. He got caught a couple of times trying to escape and then left with everyone when a prison guard strike – due to deplorable conditions – shut the prison down from 1972 to 1976. Ray finally managed to escape with six others in 1977. They used a 16-foot ladder to scale the walls. Ray then found that it wasn’t the walls that kept you in prison at Brushy – I mean, they didn’t hurt. But the prison also jutted up against a steep mountain incline and forest that is now part of Frozen Head State Park. Ray managed two days of freedom before being caught. He’d only managed to walk a few miles into the mountains.
In 1981, Ray was stabbed 22 times but survived. He stayed at Brushy until 1992, then died six years later at a facility in Nashville. Ray’s stabbing wasn’t the only incidence of violence at the prison in the early 1980s. In 1982, seven white prisoners took guards hostage at knifepoint, took their guns and attacked rival black prisoners in their cells, killing two.
Brushy Mountain Prison Today
Today, you can visit, get some food, buy some merch and even go camping. It is not unique for notorious places like Brushy to draw the curious when it no longer serves the original purpose. The Alcatraz brand is so strong that there’s a museum dedicated to it and just infamous crime in general in Pigeon Forge of all places.
I’m of two minds when I think of places like Brushy becoming tourist locations. First, I’m glad they’re preserving the history – the full history – of the place. There are lessons in the story of Brushy Mountain that remain relevant today. We need to hear them.
But I struggle with the commercial aspects necessary to keep things open. For example? I like a good paranormal tour. I like that feeling of being haunted by the ghosts of the past in some bizarre or exotic locale, even though I don’t believe. At Brushy, it’s hard for me to keep the required façade. There are too many real horrors that occurred within these walls to feel anything other than terror at what occurred. And what was allowed to occur. Paranormal tours are for fun, mostly. Having fun at Brushy is a little like having fun at Auschwitz. Ultimately, I suppose, it is a necessary trade-off.
The Brushy website sums up its legacy well:
“Brushy ate Tennessee’s sins for 113 years. It bore witness to terrible sadness and awful violence. It provided hard lessons and good jobs. More than anything, it created a legend and a legacy that will echo across this country and its history.”
Did you know you can visit Brushy Mountain Prison? Let us know in the comments! Are you planning a trip to the Smoky Mountains soon? Make sure to check out our coupons page before your trip!
I do want to visit there I am excited about it.