Big Davy Crockett

Greeneville, Tennessee

Although bear-fighter Daniel Boone left his mark in East Tennessee, Davy Crockett (1786-1836) was the go-to guy when it came to thinning the local bear population. The theme song to the Davy Crockett TV series claimed that Crockett killed his first bear when he was three years old. That's unlikely, but no one doubted that the adult Crockett was a crack shot. He claimed to have killed 105 bears in a single year between 1825 and 1826, apparently during some downtime after he'd lost an 1825 election to become a Tennessee U.S. Representative in Washington, DC. His subsequent election in 1827 spared Tennessee's surviving bears, at least for a little while.

Mark Cline and Davy Crockett.

Crockett left his home state in 1835 to seek adventure (and land) in Texas. He wound up fighting Mexicans instead of bears, and it did not end well.

On January 10, 2019, a 15-foot-tall statue of Crockett was erected outside a gas station convenience store named for the frontiersman, at the freeway exit nearest to his rural birthplace. Created by fiberglass sculptor Mark Cline, the statue depicts Crockett wearing his signature outfit -- buckskins and famous coonskin cap -- and holding a flintlock rifle, on the lookout for any wayward parking lot wildlife.