Sparta’s Rock House Historic Site will soon undergo a capital repairs project.
Tennessee Historical Commission Historic Sites Program Director Dan Brown said is looking to enhance the site through reestablishing its historic porch and interiors, while rehabilitating the building.
“The building has a very interesting and complex history,” Brown said. “Of being doctor’s office, police office, stagecoach, you know all of these different iterations and incarnations and what we want to do is develop it interpretively and tell that full story.”
Brown said that even though it’s a simple building, it’s an important story of the history of the frontier. He said that they want to try and rework the building in small ways to elaborate on it and develop it more as a tourism destination.
Brown said that the Rock House Site is one of 18 historic sites in the state of Tennessee with 110 buildings. He said that each year they explore the list to see which projects will be next to rehabilitate.
“Historic preservation is about good business and these are cultural resources just like we have natural resources out here with our forests and our beautiful mountains, and everything like that,” Brown said. “This is a cultural resource. How do we develop our cultural resources that benefit the state financially and benefit the communities they’re in and become a paying active resource? We do that through tourism. And so this is a very important part of Tennesee’s approach towards tourism and the development of our cultural resources. That’s part of our responsibility as a state agency to steward these projects and to make sure they’re properly interpreted and historically accurate.”
Brown said that the $620,000 project is funded by the state. He said that the next steps will be going into a contract with a design firm and that he expects the project to go out to bid sometime next summer.
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