CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – What’s the deal with that pink elephant? Why is it called Boot Hill? Where’s the train station mentioned in “Last Train to Clarksville”? We know you have questions, and so did we!
Here are 10 things we bet you didn’t know about Clarksville, and some explanations for both newcomers and longtime residents.
1. The pink elephant has a name
You may have seen the pink elephant with horn-rimmed glasses on Providence Boulevard, but did you know she has a name?
She landed in Clarksville thanks to Curtis Johnson, who is now a representative in the Tennessee General Assembly. When Johnson opened his first car lot on Fort Campbell Boulevard about 35 years ago, he was sold the huge, pink, fiberglass elephant by a man hauling it through town, according to The Leaf-Chronicle archives. The elephant drew a lot of attention, and Johnson held a contest to give it a name. The winner? Carlotta.
Over the years, Carlotta has appeared in several local parades, but she’s too old to move around now and has a permanent home at The Car Market, 911 Providence Blvd.
2. ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ isn’t about Clarksville
Most folks’ first association with Clarksville is that famous Monkees’ song, “Last Train to Clarksville,” and the song has been used over the years to promote the city and its events. But is it really about Clarksville? Sadly, no.
The song, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, was released in 1966 as the Monkees’ debut single. It became an immediate hit, with lead vocals by Monkees’ drummer Micky Dolenz. While Dolenz has said a few times that he thinks of our own Clarksville when he sings “Last Train,” songwriter Hart has denied he had our city in mind. In fact, the city name started with “Clarkdale.”
“We were just looking for a name that sounded good,” Hart said in an interview reported on Songfacts. “There’s a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarkdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarkdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn’t know it at the time, (but) there is an Army base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which would have fit the bill fine for the storyline.”
3. Austin Peay was an actual Gov
Most people new to Clarksville know what Austin Peay State University is, but did you know it was named for an actual person named Austin Peay? And you guessed it, he was a Tennessee governor, from 1922-27.
Gov. Austin Peay (yes, pronounced “pee” not “pay”) was an attorney born near Hopkinsville Kentucky. He studied law and, after passing the bar, married Sally Hurst of Clarksville. He was an attorney in Clarksville for six years before being elected to the Tennessee House in 1901. He served two terms before returning to his law practice. He ran for governor in 1922 and won on a platform of tax reform, completing the state highway system, and improving public education. Gov. Peay was then elected to serve a second and third term. He died in 1927 in the executive mansion in Nashville of a cerebral hemorrhage.
What was then Austin Peay Normal School was established that year and named in the late governor’s honor. It later became Austin Peay State College and then Austin Peay State University. Fun fact: While “The Gov” mascot has a jaunty mustache and monocle, the real Gov. Peay had neither. Let’s Go Peay!
4. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t a good fit at Fort Campbell
Jimi Hendrix, the guitar god who brought us “Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe,” “The Wind Cries Mary” and many more while literally setting his guitar ablaze, spent a few formative years in Clarksville and Fort Campbell while reaching a mutual decision that he and the Army weren’t a good fit.
Hendrix, born in 1942, got his first guitar at the age of 15 and was in a couple of bands by the time he was 19, according to his Wikipedia page. But he got caught riding in stolen cars and was given a classic choice: go to prison or join the Army. He enlisted in May 1961. After basic training, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. Hendrix was miserable, but he found comfort in playing his guitar. He caught the attention of fellow serviceman Billy Cox, and they began performing together at clubs on post in a band called the Casuals.
In 1962, he was granted a general discharge under honorable conditions. He and Cox moved to Clarksville and formed a band, the King Kasuals. They played in clubs in and around Clarksville and briefly moved to Nashville, playing what was called the “chitlin’ circuit.” Hendrix’s last known trip to Clarksville was in 1963 to Collins Music Store on Commerce Street. He struggled for the next several years before reaching major success in 1967 with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Hendrix is honored locally with a Tennessee Music Pathways marker on the Third Street side of Downtown Commons.
5. Barns are not on fire, and those aren’t carrots
If you stop by Trinity Episcopal Church on Franklin Street, you’ll notice it was built with a large, round, stained-glass window ringed by orange-brown shapes. No, those are not carrots. Those are tobacco leaves, and they honor the major industry of the city at the time: tobacco.
Clarksville exists primarily because of tobacco, dating back to 1789 when it was designated as a tobacco inspection point, seven years before Tennessee became a state. What we now call downtown was the home of several tobacco warehouses, and local farmers would bring their harvest to town to have it sold and shipped along the Cumberland River.
In 1869, the city’s tobacco identity was so strong that a newspaper was started to support the interests of farmers. It’s name? The Tobacco Leaf. In 1890, that paper’s owners bought out the much-older competition, The Clarksville Chronicle, renaming themselves The Clarksville Tobacco Leaf Chronicle, which was later shortened to The Leaf-Chronicle.
While tobacco has been replaced as our major local industry by tires, washing machines and electric vehicle batteries, it’s still with us in the American Snuff and US Smokeless Tobacco plants downtown, and in the smoking barns you’ll see out in the country in the fall. No, those barns aren’t on fire. Inside are tobacco leaves hung from the rafters being cured by smoke from burning fires inside.
6. Clarksville was in Top 10 for nuclear annihilation
For 20 years, Clarksville had a secret that hundreds of people knew about because they worked there. But no one could mention it.
Clarksville Base, aka “The Birdcage,” was created on Fort Campbell in 1947 and at one time housed about one-third of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. How big a deal was Clarksville Base? The Soviet Union placed it on a list of the first 10 sites to destroy in the event of nuclear war. Operations at Clarksville Base were closed in 1965 when its technology became obsolete, and control of the facility was transferred to the Army in 1969.
Clarksville Base was self-sufficient and entirely separate from Fort Campbell. It had its own power generation and water treatment facilities, utilities and roads. The administration area of Clarksville Base also included a fire station, chapel, post office, barbershop, bowling alley, swimming pool, commissary and mess hall. The base is important to Cold War historians today because it’s the only site still relatively intact.
7. Before Peanuts, Schulz was Fort Campbell soldier
Charles Schulz, the creator of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the “Peanuts” gang, served in World War II after completing training at Fort Campbell, back when it was still brand new and called Camp Campbell.
Schulz, born in 1922, was drafted in 1943 and trained for two years at Campbell as a machine gunner, rising to the rank of staff sergeant. During his time at Campbell, he sketched several cartoons about life in the Army, according to the Charles M. Schulz Museum. In February 1945 his unit, part of the 20th Armored Infantry Division, was shipped to Europe where they helped lead the charge on Munich and liberate the Dachau concentration camp. Two years later, in 1947, Schulz began drawing “Li’l Folks,” the cartoon that would later become “Peanuts.”
8. We were a Union town (mostly)
In the years just before the Civil War, Clarksville was overwhelmingly Unionist, but as more and more states seceded, Montgomery County sided with the Confederacy. The hilltop at the confluence of the Cumberland River and Red River, which had served as a fort before, was chosen by Confederate troops to become what was later called Fort Defiance.
Much of Clarksville’s fate, though, depended on what happened downstream on the Cumberland River near Dover, at Fort Donelson. After the big battle there in February 1862, Clarksville surrendered quickly and was occupied for the remainder of the war. Fort Defiance was a magnet for runaway and freed slaves, and many were employed in and around the fort itself. It then became an enlistment location for the United States Colored Troops.
Today, a visitor will find Fort Defiance well preserved; the outer earthworks, powder magazine, and gun platforms are still discernible. The Fort Defiance Interpretive Center has been built there, with artifacts and displays that document the fort’s history.
9. Uneeda Biscuit sold saltine crackers
Back before digital advertising and radio, one of the best ways to get the word out about your business was to have an advertisement painted on the side of a building. And Uneeda Biscuit was a big advertiser.
Clarksville still carries one of these signs, on the side of the Poston Building, which was built in the 1840s on Public Square. The building was visible from the river, making it a good location to advertise to the boats that traveled up and down the Cumberland at the time.
The building actually features two ads. The one on top says “1845, J.F. Counts’ Sons Furniture & Undertaking, Franklin.” The one below is for National Biscuit Company (which became Nabisco), marketing Uneeda Biscuits for 5 cents a package. Uneeda Biscuit wasn’t really a biscuit; it was more of a saltine cracker. The message says “in rain or shine, just as fine.” The benefit of Uneeda Biscuits was a new type of packaging (in 1898) that sealed them, keeping them fresh longer. Previously, crackers were stored in bulk barrels, allowing them to grow stale quickly, according to American Business History Center.
Uneeda Biscuit signs were painted on the sides of buildings in many cities, including one still visible today in the French Quarter in New Orleans.
10. It’s called Boot Hill, but boot got booted
One of the oddest place names for newcomers to Clarksville is Boot Hill. Everyone knows where and what it is – the steep hill you go up when you cross the Red River, going north on Providence Boulevard toward Fort Campbell – but there’s no signage for it, and nothing about it on Google Maps.
Here’s what’s missing: The massive cowboy boot-shaped billboard that used to be on the side of that hill.
It was an unusual advertisement for Acme Shoe Manufacturing, later Acme Boot, one of the city’s largest employers for decades, starting in the 1929. The local plant closed in 1993, but the sign remained up until 2009 as a key city landmark, at what is now the Tennessee Board of Parole Clarksville office.
While many of us have yearned to see the boot-shaped sign returned to its former site of glory, no one has stepped up yet to make it happen.
Additional sources: Historic Clarksville and Clarksville Now.