Tennessee River Museum

Savannah was a river town before it was a county seat, and this museum, in the 1939 post office next to the courthouse, tells the river's story in order. The archaeology room comes first, with projectile points, pottery and the Shiloh Effigy Pipe, a stone figure from a Mississippian site on the Shiloh battlefield. The pioneers room notes that land ceded by the Chickasaw in treaties of 1816 and 1818 pushed Tennessee's western boundary to the Mississippi and opened this country to settlers.

The Trail of Tears exhibit is the reason to come. In 1838 the U.S. Army began the forced removal of the Cherokee (Tsalagi) from their homeland. The museum says one party, known as the Bell or Treaty Party, passed along Savannah's main street before crossing the Tennessee River, and a second group traveled on the river itself, making Savannah one of the few crossing points on the route. A timeline runs from first contact to the present. The war room has a half-size replica of a gunport of the ironclad USS Cairo and what the museum calls the most complete collection of Shiloh artillery projectiles in existence.

Outside stand two pieces of petrified wood, the largest known in Tennessee. Down Main Street, Cherry Mansion on the river bluff was Grant's headquarters before and after Shiloh, and later the workplace of Queen and Alex Haley, grandparents of the writer Alex Haley. It is a private house, so ask the museum before planning to go in.