CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Some people who love Red Clay are building a library of memories about the historic area’s place in family histories as well as the nation.
Saturday was the second Red Clay Homecoming, organized by Friends of Red Clay and the Cleveland Storytellers Guild.
People could sit down before a video camera and talk.
Some remembered growing up in the area almost exactly on the Tennessee and Georgia state line. Others repeated stories they have heard about the park as the last council ground of the Cherokee before the 1838 Trail of Tears and how it became part of the Tennessee state park system.
People also brought articles and photos for copying and even artifacts to donate or show.
Alva Crowe remembered growing up in Cherokee, N.C., and coming to Red Clay as a child.
“When I first came here I was 5 or 6 years old, and my dad was just getting into show business,” Mr. Crowe said.
That included traditional dancing around the Eastern United States. The family came to Red Clay in the 1970s when the park officially opened.
A member of Friends of Red Clay, Mr. Crowe now lives in Ringgold, Ga.
Nancy Harris Crowe, Mr. Crowe’s wife, told the story of the eternal flame.
She talked about how the ancestors carried embers from the council fire with them to Oklahoma, using it to light their campfires along the way and later to establish an eternal flame in their new home.
The flame was brought to Cherokee, N.C., in the 1950s, she said. And when Red Clay opened, runners brought the flame back to its starting point.
“So that fire came full circle in those 150-something years,” she said.
Ed “Tall Bear” Elliott came from Fort Payne, Ala., to talk about his family’s association with the region.
ABOUT RED CLAYTo learn more, visit www.state.tn.us/environment/parks/RedClay/
Marta Morrison, a Friends of Red Clay member, recalled stories of ancestors who hid in caves around Sweetwater rather than go west on the Trail of Tears.
While they and others talked, a younger generation, Boy Scouts from Troop 136, were outside in a dripping rain working on a project around the park’s picnic pavilion.
The troop adopted the park as a prime spot to do projects several years ago, Scoutmaster Newton Guthrie said, and for the boys to learn some history of the region at the same time.