David Crockett State Park

David Crockett and his family moved to Lawrence County in the fall of 1817 and lived there four or five years. On Shoal Creek he operated a water-powered gristmill, a powder mill and a distillery. He served as a justice of the peace, a Lawrenceburg town commissioner and a colonel of the county militia before voters sent him to the legislature in 1821. The park is built on the land where those mills stood and holds more than 1,000 acres around Lake Lindsey.

The Crockett of legend is only part of the story. He had twice enlisted as a volunteer in the Indian wars of 1813 to 1815, yet as a congressman he broke with President Andrew Jackson and with the Tennessee delegation led by James K. Polk over land reform and the Indian removal bill, and he lost his seat in 1831. The state opened the park on May 31, 1959, as a segregated facility; a separate section for Black visitors opened two years later, and the park was integrated in the mid-1960s.

Today the museum tells Crockett's life, and a reconstructed gristmill turns on a working water wheel. Crockett Falls drops over the creek, limestone bluffs rise above the trail, and an aviary, cabins, a campground and boat and paddle rentals fill out the lake. The Lawrence County Historical Society pressed for the park for years before it opened.