The Rose Terrace House

Howard Baker Sr. came to Congress in 1950 as a Republican from a district that included the Oak Ridge laboratories, campaigning on anticommunism and atomic research. He had already lost the 1938 governor's race to Prentice Cooper and a 1940 Senate race to Kenneth McKellar. In 1956 he refused to sign the Southern Manifesto, the congressional call to resist Brown v. Board of Education. He died of a heart attack in January 1964, still in office, and his second wife, Irene, was elected to succeed him.

What the plaque says

The Rose Terrace House Rose Terrace was built in the mid-1880s by coal operator James K. Butler and was sold in 1921 to Chris Ladd and wife Matilda. The Ladd's daughter Dora married Howard H. Baker, Sr., in a ceremony held at Rose Terrace. Howard Sr. embarked on a storied career in politics as a candidate for governor of Tennessee and then as an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate. He was elected as a U.S. Representative in 1950 and served until his death in 1964. His refusal to join the resistance to the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education helped pave the way for the desegregation of schools. The firstborn of Howard and Dora was Howard H. Baker, Jr., who became a U.S. Senator from Tennessee and later served as Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan and as the United States Ambassador to Japan.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Museum of Science and Energy — 5.4 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.
• Historic Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary — 7.7 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 — 9.1 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.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 12 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.

More markers nearby

• Oak Ridge — 4.5 mi
• The Elza Gate — 7.4 mi
• Oak Ridge — 7.6 mi
• X-10 Plant — 8.1 mi