I’ve been trying to get together with Laura Still for quite some time to tag along on one of her walking tours. I’ve known Laura, mostly from a distance for years through the Knoxville Writer’s Guild (she’s a fine poet) and from her days working at Vagabondia, Andie Ray’s store on Market Square. When she started Knoxville Walking Tours a while back, I noticed her walking around town with a crowd in tow on several occasions, but I really didn’t know what she was up to, exactly.
It turns out she offers a number of walking tours of downtown and her website says her stories are primarily based on the research of Jack Neely. The tours have various themes to match your interests, unless you are as nerdy as myself and it all sounds good. She does a Literary Heritage Tour, which I’m suspecting has large doses of Cormac McCarthy and James Agee stories, among others. Others include her Early Years Tour, the Gunslinger Tour and the Shadow Side Ghost Tour. She’s currently offering a Holiday History Tour and if none of that grabs you, she’ll let you tell her what kind of tour you want. There are stories enough to fit any theme.
One of her more popular tours is a Civil War Tour, which is the one I chose for my sample. Starting at the French Market on Gay Street, the site of the headquarters of General Burnside when his troops occupied the city, she took our little group back to the time before the Civil War, when east Tennessee was predominantly unionist, while many inside Knoxville favored secession. It was a tense time in the city with anger building and resentments accumulating.
Parson Brownlow flew his American flag and defended the union not far off Gay Street and Laura pointed out where his house would have been. It was just down the hill from the Lamar Hotel, which we know today as the Bijou Theatre. That’s the same Lamar Hotel that served as the Confederate recruitment center. Ultimately the first shot fired in Knoxville related to the rising conflict was fired from the Lamar/Bijou and it was a fatal shot.
She took us around the city explaining how the small town was overwhelmed with Confederate troops, the occupied by Union troops, though they knew the day would come and it wouldn’t be long that they would have to defend the city against a returning Confederate Army. The army came under the command of General Longstreet. It was her stories of ordinary people and the small events that altered their lives that most captivated me.
Laura took us up into the Sunsphere where I was struck by a couple of things. One is how few buildings in Knoxville date to the Civil War. Most of the places described are gone. The Lamar/Bijou is an obvious exception. We stopped at the James Park Home which would have been there. The Blount Mansion and those homes beside it would have been there. The John Duncan Law Center sat on its hill, in one of its incarnations. The Catholic Church stood where Immaculate Conception is today, but I think it was a different building. And that’s about it.
The other thing that became apparent and seems counter-intuitive given the above, is that from the Sunsphere it is very easy, with the help of a good guide such as Laura, to visualize the history of the war and particularly the occupation and its culminating point, the Battle of Fort Sanders. And that is roughly where the tour ends after a little stroll back into downtown proper.
Interestingly, there’s a major anniversary of the battle of Fort Sanders coming just two days from now: Friday marks the 150th anniversary of the battle. On November 29, 1863, a brutal twenty minute battle effectively ended the siege of Knoxville and assured Union control of the city for the remainder of the war. The weather was cold and miserable, so not much has changed on that front. Marking that occasion, Laura is offering three rounds of her tour that day, at 11:00, 2:00 and 4:30. She’ll offer it again on Saturday, along with her Holiday Tour. You can get your tickets to these or other tours here. Children 6 to 12 years old are $10 and adults are $15. It’s a good way to protest against the silliness of Black Friday by remembering a serious black day in history.
One final Civil War note, in honor of the anniversary of the battle, High Ground Park will open to the public for the first time on Friday. The park preserves the remnants of historic Fort Higley where Union soldiers once guarded the high ground above Knoxville on the south side of the river. The park is open starting at 1:00 and a shuttle service will be available from a specially designated lot along Cherokee Trail at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Refreshments will be provided and exhibitors, including the East TN Historical Society, Knoxville Civil War Roundtable, McClung Museum, Legacy Parks Foundation, South Knoxville Alliance and representatives from Historic Homes of Knoxville, will have displays set up in a tent immediately adjacent to the park until 3 p.m.
That’s it until Sunday’s listing of what to do next. I plan to spend a quiet Thanksgiving with family and friends and no shopping. Hopefully I’ll see you at the lighting of the Christmas Tree, at the skating rink or the Streamliners’ concert, the Fantasy of Trees or shopping independent and local on Small Business Saturday. Stay warm.