Why this park
Fiery Gizzard State Park covers about 7,811 acres of the southern Cumberland Plateau in Grundy and Marion counties, around Tracy City and Monteagle. Its spine is the Fiery Gizzard Trail, 12.8 miles from Grundy Forest down the gorge of Fiery Gizzard Creek and along the rim to Foster Falls. Backpacker magazine has counted it among the country's 25 best backpacking trails.
What makes the place worth drawing is the gorge: cold creek water over rock, swimming holes under small falls, and Foster Falls, a 60-foot drop into a pool under sandstone bluffs. At Grundy Lakes a row of ruined coke ovens runs beside the water, and theirs is a harder story.
The story
In 1883, the site's National Register listing says, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, or TCI, built about 130 coke ovens at Lone Rock, near Tracy City, to bake coal into coke for ironmaking. Prisoners leased from the state did most of the work.
From 1866 to 1896 Tennessee rented its convicts to private companies, and most were African American, the Tennessee Encyclopedia says. The encyclopedia quotes A. S. Colyar, a company vice president, as saying the lease gave TCI "an effective club to hold over the heads of free laborers." At Lone Rock, says a University of the South report on the archaeologist Camille Westmont's research, upward of 95 percent of the prisoners were Black. The report says they mined without pay, were whipped for missing a daily coal quota, and died at a rate of about one in ten a year.
Free miners fought the lease, which held down wages and broke strikes. The Coal Creek War began in Anderson County in 1891, and on August 13, 1892, Tracy City's miners burned the Lone Rock Stockade and sent the prisoners away by train. TCI brought them back. In 1893 the legislature voted to end leasing when the contract expired, and convict labor at Tracy City ended in 1896.
In the Depression, with more than 72 percent of Grundy County's workers on relief, the Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company gave the oven land to the state, and the Civilian Conservation Corps dammed four lakes in 1938 and 1939. At Grundy Forest, CCC Company 1475 cut the first stretch of the Fiery Gizzard Trail.
The name is wrapped in legend. One story, which the park's page passes on, credits David Crockett; as Wikipedia tells it, he burned his tongue on a turkey gizzard by the creek and spat it out. The Tennessee Encyclopedia points instead to the Fiery Gizzard, an experimental blast furnace built at Tracy City in 1873, which collapsed after making fifteen tons of iron.
These lands were brought into South Cumberland State Park, which dates from 1978, the park's Friends group says. Savage Gulf became a park of its own in 2022 and Head of the Crow in 2025, and the rest took its trail's name: the state dedicated Fiery Gizzard State Park on October 20, 2025.
When to go, and what to wear
At NOAA's nearest station, Monteagle, about 1,850 feet up, the 1991 to 2020 normals put July's average high near 83°F and its low near 65°F, and the gorge trails stay shaded. Summer is swimming season, at Sycamore Falls, Blue Hole Falls and the Grundy Lakes beach. Wet, dark rock is often slick with algae, the Friends of the Parks warn, and the park lists copperheads and timber and pygmy rattlesnakes, so wear closed shoes that grip.
Spring is wildflower season, and the park points to the Fiery Gizzard and Meadow trails for them. April averages a high near 67°F and a low near 45°F, and March and April each bring more than 6 inches of rain, so pack a rain shell. October, the driest month, averages a high near 68°F and a low near 47°F, and Denny Cove, where much of the cliff line rises above the tree shade, is best climbed in the cooler months, the park says.
January averages a high near 44°F and a low near 26°F, December is the wettest month, and about 5 inches of snow falls a year. The park suggests January or February for thinner crowds; dress in layers, with a hat and gloves. The Fiery Gizzard Trail is rated difficult and hiking after dark isn't allowed, so start early and carry plenty of water.
Know before you go
- Foster Falls has the only drive-up campground; at the four reached on foot, campers must arrive by dark and carry in or filter their water. As of November 5, 2026, the park's page warns that weather has made the water sources at Little Cove and Small Wilds unavailable.
- Climbing is allowed only at Foster Falls and Denny Cove, with an online permit for every climber. Rappelling is banned at both, and jumping from falls or cliffs is banned everywhere.
- Cell service is weak along the Fiery Gizzard Trail, trailhead lots can't take RVs or horse trailers, and mountain bikes aren't allowed on the trails.
- The visitor center's museum has an exhibit on the Lone Rock Stockade. Anglers at Grundy Lakes need a fishing license.
- Hours, fees and closures change, so check Fiery Gizzard State Park's page before you go.
Sources: Tennessee Encyclopedia, "Grundy Lakes Park and Grundy Forest State Natural Area" and "South Cumberland State Recreation Area" (Carroll Van West), "Convict Lease Wars" (James B. Jones Jr.) and "Grundy County" (William Ray Turner); National Register of Historic Places, "Grundy Lakes Historic District" (Elizabeth A. Straw, Tennessee Historical Commission) and "Historic Resources of Grundy County" (1987); Kate Parrish, "Ghosts of Lone Rock," The University of the South; Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, news releases of April 19, 2017, and October 20, 2025; Friends of South Cumberland State Parks (Friends of the Parks), "The Parks" and park pages; NOAA, U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, Monteagle station; Wikipedia; Fiery Gizzard State Park, tnstateparks.com.
