The history of The End of the Line: Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary wasn’t always for the worst of the worst, for decades it was a coal mine for the state of Tennessee that originated in the wake of a bloody labor battle. The penitentiary is close to Frozen Head State Park, the location of the famed Barclay Marathon. The geographic location is known for its difficult topography and the spot was chosen to make escape impossible.
The end of the Civil War led to a boom in railroad construction and the rapid expansion of the coal mining industry throughout Tennessee. Because many of the state’s coal veins were located in remote areas, most mining companies providing housing by collecting rent from miners’ wages. When those companies opened onsite stores selling food, clothes and other necessities at inflated prices, already poor workers piled up debt. By the time their debt and rent were paid, they had little to show for a meager wage job with dangerous working conditions. The Coal Creek miners were clever, holding strikes in winter when coal demand was high; this tactic worked until a new convict lease program gave companies a cheaper, more compliant workforce.
The prison lease system was adopted throughout the South mainly because state governments couldn’t afford to build and maintain prisons or feed, shelter and clothe inmates and a convict lease program cut costs and brought in money. Beyond that, officials could exploit the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery but allowed “involuntary servitude” for criminal punishment. When federal troops left the South in 1877 after Reconstruction, state officials who were hostile to former slaves handed down long prison terms and life sentences; even for petty crimes. Soon, blacks made up the majority of prisoners in the South.
Tennessee began leasing prisoners in 1866 and by 1891, the Tennessee Coal Mine in Anderson County adopted the practice. This fateful decision led to the Coal Creek War, where citizen-miners attacked and burned the state prison, stockades and mines, then loaded prisoners and guards alike onto a train headed out of town. Mining companies sent them back and state officials called in troops for protection. When months of small-arms skirmishes led to dead men on both sides, officials realized the cost of maintaining a standing militia undercut any financial gains and as convict-lease contracts expired, legislation passed to construct the state’s first maximum security prison – Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
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. There was never a death row at Brushy, but there was plenty of death, I promise you. While America was roaring through the ‘20s, convicts at Brushy spent their days in the dark of the mines, urged to dig faster with lashes from thick leather straps.
Their nights weren’t any better, with men stacked into the original wooden buildings that were falling apart and just waiting to catch fire. In 1931, Brushy held nearly a thousand inmates, far more than it was ever meant to. 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. The state’s answer was simple. 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. For a moment, things got better. The new prison was safer, more sanitary, and built in the shape of a cross, offering inmates a narrow path to redemption.
Mining remained the sole mission of the prison until the 1960’s and 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, and let me tell you, that was never a good thing. In ‘57, after finally shutting down The Hole, they 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.
In ‘69, Brushy was reclassified as a maximum security prison. The end of the line. But convicts continued to work and die in the mines for decades. It was Lake Russell, a reform-minded warden and former football coach at nearby Carson-Newman College, who finally stopped the mining at Brushy Mountain. Of course, the mines were also losing money. So was it a good warden, or a good businessman that put an end to it? That’s Brushy for you. This was the most infamous era of Brushy’s history, a time when the assassin James Earl Ray was transported here, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. Here, he's known for the greatest escape. On June 10th, 1977, Ray attempted an escape with six of his other inmates. He was captured less than 58 hours later - he had only made it eight and a half miles. In ‘72 the guards went on strike, demanding security improvements, and Brushy was shut down for four years.
So they improved some things and reopened Brushy in ‘76, but friends, let me tell you, it was still Brushy. Tensions between black inmates and white inmates threatened to overwhelm a system that just didn’t seem capable of containing the evil of this place. In ‘82, the powder keg ignited. Seven white inmates held guards hostage at knifepoint. They took the guards’ guns, found four of their black rivals in their locked cells and opened fire. They killed two. The other two managed to survive by hiding in the corner behind their mattresses. People said things couldn’t get any worse, and maybe, finally, they were right.
In the 1980s Brushy Mountain ended its long-standing function as a maximum security prison and became 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. The last warden was Jim Worthington. The prison closed June 11, 2009. Its functions were transferred to the Morgan County Correctional Complex. Morgan County officials hope to convert the facility to other uses, including a museum and a jail to serve Morgan and surrounding counties.
The paranormal part: Brushy has seen more than it's fair share of death. Actually it has seen some of the most brutal deaths you could have imagined; murder, suicide, hanging, electric chair. The worst human behaviors, the worst criminals, and the most negative emotions have sat in the prison. That kind of evil and negativity sticks to the walls, especially in the surrounding environment, and will never leave. There are claims of screams, banging, cell doors closing and opening, and shadow figures around corners. One spirit who supposedly smokes a cigarette if you leave one as a gift, and another who is named Jack Jett a prisoner who was murdered while talking on the phone.
There is now a distillery and restaurant on the property, so be sure to get a bite to eat at the Wardens table and grab your moonshine from The End of the Line.
Information from: Brushy Mountain Website
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