Local fourth-grade students will learn about Crossville’s history as they go on history walking tours throughout September.
The tour includes visits to the Cumberland County Courthouse, the Crossville Depot, the Palace Theatre, and Veterans Memorial Park. Downtown Crossville President Lainie Luse said the tour teaches students about what goes on in the buildings and their history.
“I mean, it just really gives them pride in their downtown,” Luse said. “You know, they get to go home at the end of the day and tell their parents, you know, all these cool facts about downtown that they probably don’t know. I grew up here, I didn’t know a lot of this stuff until we started these tours.”
Luse said some interesting pieces of history about Crossville are that the city was very divided during the Civil War, and Eleanor Roosevelt visited Crossville in the 1930s when the Cumberland Homesteads were being built as part of the New Deal.
Luse said teaching the history to young students will hopefully keep Crossville’s history alive for generations to come. Luse said some people may not know it, but Crossville has a very rich history.
“We just have a lot of really cool stories and a lot of history here,” Luse said. “There have been people here for a long time working very hard to better this community, and so it’s really cool to be able to share that.”
Luse said students also receive a coloring book to take home as part of the tour. Luse said the coloring book features the downtown buildings and tells the same story they hear while taking the tour.
“During the tours, there’s a lot going on, and so you figure that a lot of these kids are not picking up on everything that they are being told, because they get a lot of information that day,” Luse said. “But we send that coloring book home with them, and it’s a fun way to read through that again.”
Students will go on the tours each Tuesday and Thursday throughout the month. Luse said the walking tours were started nearly 20 years ago by former DCI President Frances Carson.
Luse said Carson wanted the fourth graders to have something to do, as local third graders and fifth graders had field trips, while fourth graders did not have a field trip.