Alvin York was born in 1887 in Fentress County, the oldest of eleven children in a family of subsistence farmers. He had a reputation as a hell raiser until a friend died in 1914 and a revival turned him to a strict church that opposed fighting. When he was drafted in 1917 he asked to be a conscientious objector. The boards refused, because his church was not recognized, and his company commander eventually argued him into serving.
On October 8, 1918, in the Argonne, York's patrol misread its map, wound up behind German lines and came under machine-gun fire that killed nine Americans. York, a corporal, and a handful of survivors came out with 132 prisoners. He never claimed to have done it alone. The Medal of Honor made him famous anyway. He turned down much of the money offered to him. The Rotary Club of Nashville, short of its fundraising goal, gave him an unfinished house with a heavy mortgage, on a farm presented in 1922. He spent the next decades pushing for schools and roads in Fentress County.
The park keeps that farm in the Wolf River valley: the 1922 Colonial Revival house, a restored gristmill and a re-created World War I trench. York is buried in the cemetery of the Wolf River Methodist Church, after a long illness and a ten-year fight with the IRS over his film income. The farm is part of a National Historic Landmark district.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour