Union City took its name from the meeting of two railroads in the 1850s, and Discovery Park of America is its best-known attraction. It grew from the Obion County Museum, a volunteer-run collection founded in 1970 and held for forty years, and opened in its present form on November 1, 2013. The main building is a 100,000-square-foot museum with galleries on natural history, transportation, the military, space and science, and regional history. The structure stands on geopiers, a nod to the New Madrid seismic zone it sits in.
Two galleries are worth planning around. The Native American Gallery lays out artifacts on a timeline from the Paleoindian period to the historic period, a useful primer on peoples who lived here long before the Chickasaw (Chikasha) hunting range was surrendered in 1818. The regional history gallery covers Reelfoot Lake and includes an earthquake simulator that shows how the 1811-12 quakes made the lake. Together they make a good first stop before you drive out to the water.
Outside, the 50-acre heritage park includes a Settlement of eleven nineteenth-century log cabins, Mill Ridge with a one-room schoolhouse, grist mill and blacksmith shop, a railroad depot with locomotive, and Cooper Tower, a 120-foot observation deck. A cafe near the entrance is named for the Sabin photographers, whose 1920s pictures of Reelfoot Lake were part of the push to preserve it.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour