Mount Pleasant, Tennessee: Mt. Pleasant-Maury Phosphate Museum

Phosphate: nature's fertilizer and bomb fuel. Learn its lore, then visit the local strip mine pits.

Mt. Pleasant-Maury Phosphate Museum

Address:: 108 Public Square, Mount Pleasant, TN
Directions:: Downtown, on the town square. Three blocks south of Hwy 166/1st Ave. and a half-block west of Hwy 243/Main St.
Phone:: 931-379-9511
Admission:: Free, donations appreciated.

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Mt. Pleasant-Maury Phosphate Museum

The Mt. Pleasant-Maury Phosphate Museum (Maury is pronounced "Murray", not Morrey) is a repository of local city and county history, which includes displays and information on the past phosphate mining activities of the Mt. Pleasant area. The phosphate mining/processing industry was BIG business for several decades in Middle Tennessee (1930's thru the 1970's). Thousands of acres of land in Maury County alone were mined for phosphate. FYI, phosphate is the ore that was mined/processed to obtain phosphorous, which is used widely in the chemical industry and is a main ingredient in agricultural fertilizers.

If you travel some of the backroads in the area, you can still see the evidence of the old strip mine pits. Most of these areas are now re-forested, so you have to look closely.

The phosphate mining/processing activities have long since ended, but its former economic importance is remembered in this neat little museum.

[Ron Clendening, 01/11/2003]