Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

Morgan County, Tennessee's Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary opened in 1896 in a wood structure in the immediate aftermath of the Cold Creek War. The Cold Creek War was a labor conflict between area miners and the government, who had replaced them in the mines with convicts that would work for free. The prison was strategically located so that the inmates would have a secure place to stay. Eventually the Tennessee State Government realized that Brushy was the perfect place to send the most notorious of criminals. Due to its location in the mountains, most people did not know how to get there, and convicts would not try to escape due to being surrounded by mountains. As the prison population continued to increase, the need for a larger facility became apparent. In the 1920s, a new more modern "castle like" prison was constructed. The stone used in building this new facility was mined from the mountains by the prison inmates. For the next 89 years, Brushy became known as Tennessee's most infamous prison. It was also Tennessee's premier maximum security prison. Perhaps two of the most infamous Tennessee criminals served their sentences at Brushy. In 1968 James Earl Ray was convicted in Memphis for assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. Ray was sentenced to life in prison and assigned to Brushy. In 1977, Ray and six other convicts escaped from Brushy. After a three day chase through the mountains, they were all recaptured. In the late 1990s, Ray was transferred to the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville so he could have access to better medical care. Ray died in 1998 at that facility. The second infamous inmate that served his sentence at Brushy was Byron "Low Tax" Looper. Looper was originally from Georgia and had left the state after failing in his bid for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. He eventually relocated to Cookeville, Tennessee and was successfully elected as Property Assessor of Putnam County. Looper legally changed his name from "Anthony" to "Low Tax" in order to convince people to vote for him. In March 1998 Looper was indicted by a Putnam County Grand Jury on 14 counts of misuse of county property and employees. Looper had recently launched a campaign to the Tennessee General Assembly in opposition to incumbent Tommy Burks. Looper knew the only way he could defeat the popular and beloved Burks was to assassinate him. On the morning of October 10, 1998 Looper drove to the Burks farm and shot and killed Tommy Burks. The Burks farm actually straddles the Putnam/Cumberland County lines. The assassination actually occurred in Cumberland County. After several delays, Looper finally went to trial in Cumberland County in 2000 and was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison at Brushy. When Brushy closed in 2009, Looper was transferred to the Morgan County Correctional Complex. In 2013 he was found dead in his cell from an apparent heart attack. As mentioned above, Brushy closed in 2009. The facility sat empty for the next few years, but was finally reopened as a museum in 2018. Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary is one of the best preserved examples of a maximum security prison in the United States.

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