East TN History Center

The East Tennessee History Center is located on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. Museum admission is free on Sundays, where they are open from 1-5, the rest of the week costs $5 for adults and is open from 9-4 weekdays and 10-4 on Saturdays. The complex includes Museum of East Tennessee History, East Tennessee Historical Society, Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection and Knox County Archives. It is a vibrant bustling place and a good start for people wanting to know more about Eastern Tennessee.

The Museum of East Tennessee History occupies the majority of the ground floor. For a staff of five, this is an incredibly well put together museum. The first area you come to in the museum is a streetscape showing what life would have been like in a generic town around turn of the century 1900. The trolley car is a permanent fixture in the museum. That and the drug store are lovely to look at, but perhaps need to be a bit more interactive.

The cornerstone exhibit and pride of the museum is Voices of the Land. While it is very visually grabbing, the sheer amount of text took away from some of what the artifacts would say on their own. The whole exhibit could lose half the text it has and still tell the story that it wants to present. However, they did do a good thorough job of using people's personal experiences and words to tell the story of the history of the region. There was enough in this one exhibit to take up almost an entire day if you wished to take your time reading all the text.

Vanishing Appalachia is the temporary exhibit in the museum and unfortunately, I did not get to spend enough time wandering through it to say much. The few photographs I had a chance to really look at were visually striking and I hope to return to spend more time, both in the Voices and the photographs fall semester.