Judge John Jordan Gore

Gore sat on the panel that helped decide whether the Tennessee Valley Authority could survive. Eighteen private power companies sued TVA in 1936, and an injunction stopped dam construction and power distribution until the district court ruled in TVA's favor in 1938. The Supreme Court dismissed the suit in January 1939. Wendell Willkie headed the holding company that owned most of the valley's private power companies, and the Tennessee Electric Power Company was later absorbed into the public system.

What the plaque says

Judge John Jordan Gore Mounce Lauderdale Gore, father of Judge Gore, was born on this property in 1840. He fought with the 8th Tennessee Regiment (CSA) in the Civil War, rising to the rank of colonel. John Jordan was born to Mounce and Mary Cassetty Gore in Gainesboro in 1874. After 1894 he practiced law in Gainesboro and worked this farm. Upon being appointed U.S. district court judge in 1923 he moved to Nashville. Gore sat on the three-judge panel in 1938 that decided the constitutionality of TVA. He died in 1939 and is buried in the family cemetery on this farm.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cummins Falls State Park — 7.3 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Standing Stone State Park — 13 mi
  A New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 14 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Red Boiling Springs — 18 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.

More markers nearby

• The Austin Peay Bridge — 3.0 mi
• Alvan Cullen Gillem July 29, 1830 - December 2, 1875 — 3.2 mi
• Michaux's Discovery 1796 — 3.2 mi
• Orion Clemenes 1825-1897 — 3.2 mi