Harriman: Utopia of Temperance

Founded in 1890 by northern investors, Harriman was meant to prove that industry and prohibition could prosper together. General Clinton B. Fisk, who had run for president on the Prohibition ticket in 1888 and drew fewer than 6,000 Tennessee votes, was named president of the land company. The dream stalled when the land company suffered losses in the panic of 1893. That same year American Temperance University opened in town, and it kept that name until 1907-8. The town never reached the economic success its founders had planned.

What the plaque says

Harriman: Utopia of Temperance Incorporated in 1891, this was to be an ideal industrial city, an object lesson for thrift, sobriety, superior intelligence and exalted moral character, where workers would be uncorrupted by Demon Rum. Named for Union General Walter Harriman, former governor of New Hampshire. Leader of movement was Union General Clinton B. Fisk, founder of Fisk University and Prohibition candidate for President in 1888.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 5.2 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.
• Historic Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary — 13 mi
  The coal-mining prison opened in 1896 after the Coal Creek War ended convict leasing, where James Earl Ray escaped in 1977, now a tourist site and distillery.
• Frozen Head State Park — 14 mi
  A 24,000-acre Cumberland Mountains park around a 3,324-foot peak, made from Brushy Mountain prison lands and the CCC, and home to the Barkley Marathons.
• American Museum of Science and Energy — 18 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.

More markers nearby

• Dixie Lee 1909-1952 — 1.1 mi
• Honoring the Kingston Coal Ash Cleanup Workers — 2.5 mi
• Southwest Point — 4.4 mi
• Capitol for a Day — 4.7 mi