Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

At the end of all the state's convict lease arrangements on January 1, 1896, some 210 of those prisoners became the first inmates of Brushy Mountain.

[1][4] The prison is nearly encircled by rugged wooded terrain in a remote section of the Cumberland Plateau, adjacent to Frozen Head State Park and Natural Area.

In the 1980s Brushy Mountain ended its long-standing function as a maximum security prison and assumed a mission as a classification facility.

[9] In addition, Brushy features the Warden's Table Restaurant, which serves Southern and American staples such as barbecue and cheeseburgers in a cafeteria-like format.

[10] In addition to James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., notable inmates included Byron Looper, who was convicted in 2000 for the murder of State Senator Tommy Burks and began serving his life sentence at Brushy Mountain.

[citation needed] George Hyatte, one of the perpetrators of the 2005 Kingston courthouse shooting, was imprisoned at Brushy Mountain at the time of that incident.

[7][11] In the novel The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter is offered a transfer to Brushy Mountain in exchange for providing information about Buffalo Bill, a serial killer.