Henry Horton State Park

The Duck River bends through this 1,552-acre park, built in the early 1960s on the former farm of Henry Horton, who was governor of Tennessee from 1927 to 1933. Horton's grave is inside the park. The park had the first eighteen-hole golf course built in a Tennessee state park, named for Buford Ellington, another Marshall County governor, and it kept the site of Wilhoite Village, a nineteenth-century crossroads, and the Wilhoite Mill and dam, built on the river in 1845 and 1846.

Horton, a Marshall County lawyer, became governor when Austin Peay died in office. He leaned on the Nashville power broker Luke Lea, and when Lea's partner Rogers Caldwell's banking empire collapsed in 1930, almost seven million dollars of state deposits were lost. The legislature investigated, and the House voted 58 to 41 against impeaching him; he served out his term and died in 1934.

The river is the reason to come now. The park calls the Duck biologically diverse, and visitors can kayak or tube it; guided floats of about two hours run weekly through the summer. The Wilhoite Mill Trail leads to the remains of the mill and its bridge, and the park also keeps a bee apiary, a campground, cabins and a lodge.