A Day Away By Mike Steely
Let’s take a road trip along what was the Great Warrior’s Path and is now Highway 25E. Let’s head north and stop here and there along that road, originally blazed by Daniel Boone, and start at Bean Station. That little town was a very early settlement and was literally moved to higher ground during the building of Cherokee Lake.
Going north from there toward Corbin, Kentucky, first brings you to the Clinch Mountain Overlook, which faces the Tennessee Valley. You can park at the Veterans Park there and look off all the way to the Smoky Mountains.
Heading north again, you’ll come to the old town of Tazewell, which played a part in the Civil War and has an earthen Union fort above the town. It also has a restored gas filling station just off the highway and an ancestral home nearby is being converted to a museum.
From Tazewell to Harrogate, where you’ll find the Lincoln Memorial Museum just off the road, you’ll come to Cumberland Gap with its trails, overlooks and the Cudjo Caverns. There’s also a grist mill, a downtown park with picnic tables and historic homes.
Leaving Cumberland Gap, let’s take the highway tunnel into Middlesboro, Ky., where you’ll find the Cumberland Gap Visitors Center, the road to the Pinnacle Overlook, a neat downtown and a visitor center inside an actual “Coal House.” If you look well enough, you can also find the grave of Virginia’s Arthur Campbell, a supporter of the lost state of Franklin, in Middlesboro.
Heading up toward Pineville, you’ll pass the entrance to Pine Mountain State Park, where you can find camping, lodging, natural arches and Chained Rock sitting high above the town far below.
Pineville, the seat of Hawkins County, has a historic courthouse square and an interesting downtown section.
Continuing north, you’ll come to a place you’d normally miss if you don’t know about it. On the east side of Highway 25E is Flat Lick, a small community where the Wilderness Road once split, with one branch leading farther north and the west fork, now the main highway, leading toward Barbourville. The place was also a Civil War muster site for Union forces.
In Barbourville, home of Union College, you’ll find the Thomas Walker State Park, which features a replica of the first cabin built in the Bluegrass State by early explorers.
From that Knox County (Kentucky) town, the highway brings you to Corbin, where you’ll find the original Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant built by Col. Harlan Sanders. He was a Kentucky colonel, not a military officer. The restaurant also has a museum. Just north of Corbin is London, Ky, and the Levi Jackson State Park, which has a water mill and the graves of early pioneers massacred in an Indian attack.
From Corbin or London, you can hop onto Interstate 75 and be back in Knoxville in about 90 minutes.
You might want to take the entire route or pick portions of it to explore, but it makes for a fun and interesting day away, especially when you can link places with the history there.
