<p align="center"><strong>Wish You Were Here: Retreat to Tennessee’s Historic Resorts</strong></p>

This exhibit showcases the popularity of Tennessee’s resort culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whether patrons of old sought “The Carlsbad of America” or “The Switzerland of Tennessee” that might be “Patronized by the Most Aristocratic Southern Families” or simply sought a health and pleasure resort “Where Heat, Dust, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Hay Fever are Unknown,” it could be found in Tennessee.  In this exhibit, the Tennessee State Library and Archives opens a window into a bygone era.

Visitors often arrived to a resort area by railroad and boarded a hack (a horse with a cart or buggy attached), and they were transported along a country road to arrive at a fine hotel amidst the fanfare of a brass band.  Resort advertisements appealed to people who were ill or exhausted by urban life. The resorts offered the promise of “healing waters” for drinking or bathing.  Some places were more luxurious than others, and offered ameniteis such as dance pavilions, bowling halls, fishing, hunting, swimming, card playing, horse and buggy rides, ping pong, tennis, croquet, pool, or billiards. Visitors lounged on the porches, verandas, and bath houses. Some of the finest resorts even offered French cooks, resident physicians, and orchestras for the “season."

This exhibit features photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, letters, postcards, advertisements, hotel registers, and other memorabilia to highlight the mineral springs, accommodations, and amusements surrounding the age of Tennessee’s historic resorts.