Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex (Petros, Tennessee)

 abandoned / shut down, prison museum

Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex was opened in 1896. Built from stone mined on the property, it was the oldest operating prison in Tennessee until its closure in 2009. The prison was founded as a result of the aftermath of the Coal Creek War, an 1891 lockout of coal miners that took place in Coal Creek and Briceville, Tennessee, after miners protested the use of unpaid convict labor in the mines. This labor conflict was eventually resolved in favor of the coal miners with a bill passing the Tennessee state legislature to abolish the convict labor system, to be replaced by a modern penitentiary system of which Brushy Mountain was the first to be constructed. The prison is nearly encircled by a remote section of the Cumberland Plateau. Escape attempts have been infrequent and almost always unsuccessful.

The prison had a current capacity of 584. It is used as the state's reception/classification and diagnostic center for East Tennessee and houses all custody levels of inmates, although it has a maximum security designation. The last warden was Jim Worthington.

Among the most famous inmates at Brushy Mountain was James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., who, with six other inmates, managed to escape but were at large for just three days. Also, Byron Looper, who was convicted in 2000 for the murder of State Senator Tommy Burks, was serving a life sentence at Brushy Mountain and presumably transferred when the prison closed. The successor prison was the Morgan County Correctional Complex, which completed an expansion at the time to service the new Brushy Mountain inmates.

Today, there's a small prison museum on the largely vacant grounds.