Lone Rock Coke Ovens

The first revolt against convict leasing came in January 1871, when free white miners in Tracy City struck the coal company for higher wages and an end to the system. Most of the prisoners the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company worked were African American. In August 1892 miners in Grundy County rose again at two company sites, Inman and Tracy City, and their attacks set off new revolts in Anderson County. Convicts were shipped away and stockades burned. Peter Turney, a Marion County native, signed the law that finally ended the lease system.

What the plaque says

Lone Rock Coke Ovens The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in 1883 built 120 coke ovens 6 miles east to help supply its growing iron works. The company contracted with the state, and convicts worked the ovens until 1896. On August 13, 1892, Tracy City miners, who opposed the use of convict labor, burned the stockade and put the convicts on a train and sent them back to Nashville as had been done in Anderson County, Tennessee in 1891.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sewanee: The University of the South — 12 mi
  The Episcopal university on the Cumberland Plateau, founded in 1857 as a school for the slaveholding South and now examining that history through its own Roberson Project.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 13 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 26 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.
• Ross's Landing — 27 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.

More markers nearby

• Fiery Gizzard — 0.6 mi
• Highlander Folk School 1932-1962 — 4.5 mi
• Crossroads of War — 5.8 mi
• Monteagle Sunday School Assembly — 6.5 mi