By Davy Crockett 

Both a podcast episode and a full article

The Barkley Marathons, the toughest trail race in the world, is held in and near Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, with a distance of more than 100 miles. The first year it was held was in 1986, and it is now world famous. Only 40 runners are selected to run.

Barkley is the brainchild of Gary Cantrell (Lazarus Lake) and Karl Henn (Raw Dog).  In 1985, they had been intrigued by the very few miles that James Earl Ray had covered back in 1977 during his 54.5-hour prison escape in the mountains.  Cantrell felt that he could do much better.  See Barkley Marathons – The Birth

That year Cantrell and Henn went up into that wilderness to backpack, in two days, the “boundary trail,” about 20 miles, constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps decades earlier. Four people died building the trail. When they showed the rangers their route around the park, they were told that they wouldn’t be able to make it. The rangers didn’t want them to go on the hike because they didn’t want to have to rescue them. But the rangers were convinced to give them a permit. The first 7.5 miles took the two ten hours to cover.

They did finish their backpack trip and told the rangers that they had some friends who would probably like to run the trail. The idea for Barkley had been hatched and a course was designed and plans put into place for the first year of the Barkley in 1986 at Frozen Head State Park.  Cantrell later said, “The best description of the course I’ve heard? Someone told me that every ultra has its signature hill, the nasty one that’s totally unreasonable and makes or breaks the race—the Barkley is like all those hills just put end on end.”



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Frozen Head State Park

CCC Dynamite shack

In 1933, the Tennessee Governor set aside a large portion of the Brushy Mountain State Prison’s lands to establish the Morgan State Forest. That year the Civilian Conservation Corps came and constructed roads, facilities, and some trails that Barkley uses today including the Boundary Trail. The CCC worked for multiple years. Rattlesnakes and all the prison escapes taking place every year made it difficult to establish a camp in the forest until 1938. In 1952 a large portion of the forest was burned and prison inmates were used to fight the fire. In about 1970 the Frozen Head State Park was established.

One of the unknown heroes of the Barkley is Don Todd (1918-2005) of Wartburg, Tennessee. He was active since the 1960s in an effort to protect the area that became Frozen Head State Park. Since the 60s he led wildflower-spotting hikes within the park to acquaint others with its diversity of plants and animals.

Don Todd

Todd pushed to have nine square miles around Frozen Head declared unsuitable for coal mining and helped stop plans for a huge strip mine on Frozen Head which would have been visible from 80% of the trails within the park. Thankfully that didn’t happen and Todd was proud that the park looks pretty much the way it did when “the first white men came.”  He said, ”it’s something I put value on trying to improve the quality of life in the mountains a little bit. In 1985 he was awarded the Gulf Conservation Award for his efforts.

Coal strip mining was a constant worry for the area. In 1971 a coordinated effort gathered petitions and fought to not allow state land close to the park  to be sold off to potential strip miners. In 1973 a state bill was introduced to prevent strip-mining of 2,500 acres of coal land near Frozen Head. But strip mining was a constant threat to the park.

In 1978 a public hearing was held in Wartburg about doing strip mining on Bird Mountain, right on the future Barkley course. The hearing was heated and dominated by miners.