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Last
One Standing?
William
Wayne Weems
©
2019
by
William Wayne Weems
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First there was the prehistoric stone
figure.
Mountain ranges in Eastern Tennessee generally run Southwest to
Northeast, so a easier East/West path through those heights was
prized among native peoples. Perhaps this is what led native
craftsmen to sculpt the figure of a bear or a dog sitting on his
haunches beside that trail and facing West, his two ears struck up
high on his head. The first accounts of the descendants of European
settlers noted the reverence Native Americans showed to that figure.
But unsurprisingly the first roads followed
the
Native paths, and pale skinned travelers began to whack off pieces of
the stone figure for "good luck". By 1893 visiting scholars
could not agree from the remaining remnant whether it had been worked
by human hands or not. That determination had become critical. A
Capitalist Railroad "robber Baron" named Jere Baxter had
plunged deeply into debt to complete the Nashville and Knoxville
Railway, and the Standing Stone was in the way of a critical stretch
of track. The dithering of scholars meant he had a perfect excuse to
blow it up. Locals secured one of the larger remaining fragments and
moved it to a Monterey, TN City Park. Much later a "New Deal"
WPA Camp some 20 miles away was converted into a recreational site
and named Standing Stone State Park. Now an October day is set out by
the locals to honor the remaining fragment in their city park, and
the Standing Stone Day has its own Facebook page.
"Colonel" Jere Baxter (his brothers were
the Confederate officers, not he) was honored for seeing the renamed
Tennessee Central Railroad through to its conclusion. Despite his
rapacious reputation, a handsome statue of him was erected on the
intersection of West End and Broadway Streets in the City of
Nashville. Outraged critics of Baxter promised that if a rascal like
him warranted a statue, they would erect a statue of that 19th
Century Al Capone, the bandit John A.Murrell, in a Nashville park. It
is said a plaster effigy of Murrell was erected on a empty marble
pedestal (that had once held an astrolabe) and that name scratched on
its base, but the Baxter statue had greater longevity. A school was
named for him on Gallatin Road in Nashville, and his statue moved
there. When a new school took his name, the statue was moved again!
(photos showing the original fragment and the Baxter statue's present
perch).
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William
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