Marker: Last Boone Bear Tree

Johnson City, Tennessee

Daniel Boone gets confused with Davy Crockett, who came along later and led a life more appealing to Hollywood scriptwriters. So why do we remember Daniel Boone? Mostly because he killed bears. Many, many bears. We know this because Daniel Boone would often carve his name and the date into a nearby tree when he killed one.

"Boone Bear Trees" became one of America's earliest tourist attractions. They were considered honorable relics for the towns that had them. This, of course, led to counterfeit Boone Bear Trees, while the real ones gradually grew old and died. The last known survivor stood in northeast Tennessee, on the slope of Carroll Creek, near the town of Jonesborough.

Its inscription, about six feet off the ground, was "D. Boon CillED A. BAr on tree in the YEAR 1760."

But vandals and morons eventually obliterated the inscription with their own names, and in 1920 the tree, estimated to be over 350 years old, fell down in a storm.

That was not the end of the last Boone Bear Tree. Some of its wood was fashioned into gavels that were used in the Jonesborough county courthouse. In 1924 the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument on the site where the tree once stood, now inaccessible on private land, but there's a public historical marker along the road.