Spencer

History

Spencer is named after Thomas Sharp Spencer (d. 1794), a long hunter who passed through the Van Buren County area in the mid-18th century. The town was established in 1850 and incorporated in 1909. In 1942, Spencer elected a full slate of women officials. Burritt College was located in Spencer from 1848 until its closure in 1939. In 1937, the U.S. government began purchasing the badly eroded land around Fall Creek Falls. The following year, the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps began the work of restoring the forest and constructing park facilities. The National Park Service transferred ownership of the park to the State of Tennessee in 1944. Millikan's Overlook is named after Glenn Millikan, who was head of the Department of Physiology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and son of Nobel Laureate Robert A. Millikan. Millikan was killed by a falling rock on May 25, 1947, while rock climbing "Buzzard's Roost," the cliff beneath the overlook. In 2006, the State of Tennessee purchased 12,500 acres (51 km2) of land along the White-Van Buren County line, in the vicinity of Bledsoe State Forest. The purchase was part of an effort to create an unbroken corridor of publicly owned land between Fall Creek Falls State Park and Scott's Gulf, a few miles to the north in White County. The Fall Creek Falls Inn and Conference Center offered 144 guest rooms and over 5,000 square feet (460 m2) of banquet space in five conference rooms, which accommodated up to 400 people. The buildings were designed with a brutalist architecture, having a combination of dark brick, and gray concrete with an exposed aggregate of smooth white, beige, tan, and brownish river stones. Built in the 1960s, with a rooms-only annex in the 1970s, they were…

Geography

Spencer is located at (35.743740, -85.458408). The town is situated at the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, just above the Caney Fork valley. The river forms Van Buren's boundary with White County several miles north of Spencer. Spencer is topographically isolated by the Cumberland Plateau's escarpment to the north and west, the Cane Creek Valley to the east, and the Dry Fork Gulf to the south. Cane Creek, along with its tributary, Dry Fork, slices a narrow valley as it spills down northward toward its confluence with the Caney Fork, effectively dividing the Spencer area from the rest of the plateau. Cane Creek's upper watershed, known for its scenic waterfalls and geological formations, comprises the bulk of Fall Creek Falls State Park. Spencer is concentrated along State Route 30, which connects Spencer with Pikeville in the Sequatchie Valley to the east, and McMinnville to the west. State Route 111, which traverses the eastern part of Spencer, connects the town with Sparta and Cookeville to the north, and Dunlap in the Sequatchie Valley to the south. Spencer is approximately 30 miles south of Cookeville and 25 miles west of Pikeville. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all land.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  856
• Tufted Titmouse

  Baeolophus bicolor (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  652
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  595
• Carolina Wren

  Thryothorus ludovicianus (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  571
• Turkey Vulture

  Cathartes aura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  531
• Eastern Bluebird

  Sialia sialis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  529
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  523
• Carolina Chickadee

  Poecile carolinensis (Audubon, 1834) · Aves
  475

Most recent

• M 2.58 — 2024-03-10
  14 km W of Graysville, Tennessee
• M 2.58 — 2024-02-29
  9 km NNW of Graysville, Tennessee
• M 2.5 — 2023-12-23
  7 km ENE of Stevenson, Alabama
• M 2.52 — 2023-06-21
  6 km SSE of Sewanee, Tennessee
• M 2.5 — 2023-04-21
  9 km WSW of Oakdale, Tennessee
• M 4.3 — 2021-08-13
  2 km ENE of Crab Orchard, Tennessee