This list of museums in Tennessee encompasses museums defined for this context as institutions (including nonprofit organizations, government entities, and private businesses) that collect and care for objects of cultural, artistic, scientific, or historical interest and make their collections or related exhibits available for public viewing. Museums that exist only in cyberspace (i.e., virtual museums) are not included.
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Nature preserve that includes the Farmstead Museum with antiques and agricultural equipment, a nature center with exhibits on natural history and space exploration, native animals and a planetarium
Operated by the Heritage Alliance of Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, exhibits of local history and restore late 10th-century upstairs parlor and dining room
Park contains the remains of 268 beehive coke ovens used in the early 20th century to convert mountain coal into industrial coke, a product used to smelt iron ore
Fossils from the Gray Fossil Site, officially known as the East Tennessee State University and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum and Visitor Center
Cultural heritage of East Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains region including Native American history, pioneer and mountaineer history and culture
American art including Hudson River School, 19th-century-genre painting, American Impressionism, the Ashcan School, early modernism, regionalism, and post World War II modern and contemporary art
website, part of the University of Tennessee at Martin Paul Meek Library, gallery for changing exhibits in art, decorative arts, photography, culture, science and history
Mostly European automobiles, including propeller-powered vehicles, microcars, three wheeled cars, amphibious vehicles, alternative fuel vehicles, military vehicles, one of a kind vehicles and prototypes
Located in Norris Dam State Park, includes Lenoir Pioneer Museum with antique household items and tools, the Rice Gristmill and the Crosby Threshing Barn
Website, country music star Loretta Lynn's park, includes the biographical Coal Miner's Daughter Museum, the Plantation Home tour, Frontier Homestead with 19th-century furnished cabins and equipment, Native American Artifacts Museum, Loretta's Fan & Doll Museum
Part of the University of Tennessee, exhibits include natural history, archaeology, Ancient Egypt, decorative arts, geology and fossils of Tennessee, Tennessee freshwater mussels
Collections include Italian Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionist, and 20th-century artists, English portraiture, contemporary paintings, 19th- and 20th-century sculpture and decorative arts
Popular non-profit children's museum focusing on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, and arts) with hands-on exhibits and full-dome planetarium. Formerly the East Tennessee Discovery Center
Museum at Mountain Home
Johnson City
Washington
East
Medical
Website, part of the Quillen College of Medicine of East Tennessee State University, history of the Veterans Administration Medical Center at Mountain Home and health care in South Central Appalachia
website, includes guided tours of historic original home and furniture, a grist mill shop, blacksmith shop, weaving shop, Agriculture Museum, 1820 Log Cabin and homestead, 1950's Gulf Service Station, Antique Car & Transportation Museum
Includes the reconstructed American Revolutionary War Fort Watauga, a visitor center with exhibits and the late-18th-century John and Landon Carter Mansion
website, operated by the agricultural experiment station of the University of Tennessee, includes tools, equipment and displays of agriculture and agrarian life in West Tennessee
website, includes West Tennessee Cotton Museum, West Tennessee Music Museum, Hatchie River Museum, Sleepy John Estes Home, Felsenthal Lincoln Collection, Flagg Grove School with Tina Turner memorabilia
Sevier County is a county of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 98,380. Its county seat and largest city is Sevierville. Sevier County comprises the Sevierville, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Knoxville-Morristown-Sevierville, TN Combined Statistical Area.
Chattanooga is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. It is located along the Tennessee River, and borders Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee's fourth-largest city and one of the two principal cities of East Tennessee, along with Knoxville. It anchors the Chattanooga metropolitan area, Tennessee's fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area, as well as a larger three-state area that includes Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and Northeast Alabama.
Townsend is a city in Blount County, Tennessee. The city was chartered in 1921 by persons who were involved with the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company. The population was 550 at the 2020 census. For thousands of years a site of Native American occupation by varying cultures, Townsend is one of three "gateways" to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It has several museums and attractions relating to the natural and human history of the Great Smokies.
Newport is a city in and the county seat of Cocke County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 6,945 at the 2010 census, down from 7,242 at the 2000 census. The estimated population in 2018 was 6,801. Newport is located along the Pigeon River.
Gatlinburg is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee. It is located 39 miles (63 km) southeast of Knoxville and had a population of 3,944 at the 2010 Census and a U.S. Census population of 3,577 in 2020. It is a popular vacation resort, as it rests on the border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park along U.S. Route 441, which connects to Cherokee, North Carolina, on the southeast side of the national park. Prior to incorporation, the town was known as White Oak Flats, or simply White Oak.
Pigeon Forge is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 6,343. Situated just 5 miles (8 km) north of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Pigeon Forge is a tourist destination that caters primarily to Southern culture and country music fans. The city's attractions include Dollywood and Dollywood's Splash Country, WonderWorks, Alcatraz East Crime Museum, Dolly Parton's Stampede, as well as numerous gift shops, outlet malls, amusement rides, and musical theaters.
Sevierville is a city in and the county seat of Sevier County, Tennessee, United States, located in eastern Tennessee. The population was 17,889 at the 2020 United States Census.
Seymour is a census-designated place (CDP) and unincorporated community in Blount and Sevier counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The CDP population was 14,705 at the 2020 U.S. census. It is included in the Knoxville, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Dollywood is a theme park that is jointly owned by Herschend Family Entertainment and country singer-songwriter Dolly Parton through her entertainment company, Dolly Parton Productions. It is located in the Knoxville metropolitan area in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near the gateway to The Great Smoky Mountains. Hosting nearly 3 million guests in a typical season from mid-March to the Christmas holidays, Dollywood is the biggest ticketed tourist attraction in Tennessee. It has won many international awards.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The border between the two states runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 13 million visitors in 2023, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.
The Foothills Parkway is a national parkway which traverses the foothills of the northern Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. The 72.1-mile (114 km) parkway will connect U.S. Route 129 along the Little Tennessee River in the west with Interstate 40 (I-40) along the Pigeon River in the east.
The Great Smoky Mountains Parkway is a highway that travels 23.4 miles (37.7 km) between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Interstate 40 (I-40) in Kodak, Tennessee, in East Tennessee. It serves as the main thoroughfare for Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville, and includes a 4.3-mile (6.9 km) spur of the Foothills Parkway. It is composed of sections of a number of numbered highways, including U.S. Route 441 (US 441) and US 321 and State Route 66 (SR 66) and SR 448.
The Sugarlands is a valley in Tennessee within the north-central Great Smoky Mountains, located in the southeastern United States. Formerly home to a string of small Appalachian communities, the valley is now the location of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park headquarters and the Sugarlands Visitor Center. Lying just south of Gatlinburg, the Sugarlands is one of the park's most popular access points.
Wears Valley is an unincorporated community in Sevier County, Tennessee that was formerly treated by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census county division. As of the 2000 Census, the population of Wears Valley was 6,486.
The Smoky Mountain Railroad was a standard gauge class-III shortline that operated from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Sevierville, Tennessee, from 1909 until 1961.
The U.S. state of Tennessee contains a diverse economy that is made up of many sectors with a mix of industries including manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and tourism. The state is home to several major corporations, including FedEx, the largest courier company in the world, and AutoZone, the largest retailer of auto parts in the United States.
The Hollywood Wax Museum is a two-story wax museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It features replicas of celebrities in film, television and music. The Tennessee museum was originally located in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
The Music of East Tennessee has a rich history, and played a major role in the development of modern country and bluegrass music. Bristol, known as "the birthplace of country music",, and Johnson City, notable for the Johnson City recording sessions, are both towns in the Tri-Cities region of East Tennessee. The music of East Tennessee is defined by country, gospel, and bluegrass artists, and has roots in Appalachian folk music.
The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, also known as the Gatlinburg wildfires, were a complex of wildfires which began in late November 2016. Some of the towns most impacted were Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, both near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The fires claimed at least 14 lives, injured 190, and is one of the largest natural disasters in the history of Tennessee.
↑ "History". Howard H. Baker Jr Center for Public Policy. Retrieved 4 February 2016. Concurrently, various task forces reviewed the mission of the Baker Center and in 2012 the museum was closed and converted into offices for the Chancellor's Honors Program and the Modern Political Archives was turned over to UT Libraries Special Collections. As a result, staff was reduced and segments of the museum were moved into locations throughout the building, where they can be viewed today.
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