Boy Scout 1929 Flash Flood Memorial

Rockwood, Tennessee

Scoutmaster James Tarwater Wright led 21 members of Rockwood Troop 45 on a Friday night campout on March 22, 1929. They were only a few miles from home, just off US 27, in a bungalow cabin along White's Creek, when the flash flood hit. The creek swelled to nearly 10 times its normal size. The railroad and highway bridges just upstream washed out, sending debris crashing into the cabin. In the morning, 14 boys were found alive in the treetops, but the other seven, and Scoutmaster Wright, did not survive.

To mark the cabin site, a large cross embellished with the Boy Scouts logo atop a 20-foot-tall pillar of rocks was built. It was impossible to miss while US 27 remained a country road, but when the highway was later double-laned with an elevated bridge across the creek, the memorial was bypassed and forgotten.

A restoration effort in 2017 by Scout Troops in several nearby towns cleaned the monument and cleared away the encroaching trees and undergrowth. The washed-out gravel road leading to the monument suggests that visitors still shouldn't visit when it's raining.