Abandoned Echoes of Tennessee-coming November 24, 2026!
For years, I’ve been drawn to the places that time has left behind. Not the polished landmarks or the destinations on postcards, but the forgotten buildings, abandoned institutions, and remnants of industries that once played a part in Tennessee’s story. Places where the people are gone, the machinery has stopped, and nature is slowly reclaiming what remains. That journey has now become a book.
Abandoned Echoes of Tennessee, published by Sutton Publishing as part of the America Through Time series, will be released on November 24, 2026.
The book takes you inside some of Tennessee’s quietest and eeriest corners. At its heart is Western State Hospital, a sprawling former asylum whose empty halls still carry the weight of decades of lives lived, suffering endured, and secrets left behind.
From there, the journey moves through the rusting remains of U.S. Pipe and the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant, the silent corridors of the Masons’ Widows and Orphans Home, the deserted Navy Training Center, a defunct hydroelectric plant that once powered Bemberg in East Tennessee, and a historic West Tennessee church where hymns still seem to hang in the air.
There is something particularly meaningful about photographing places like these. They are more than abandoned buildings. They are pieces of Tennessee history—and history has a way of disappearing when nobody is looking.
In fact, some of the places featured in this book have already disappeared.
U.S. Pipe and the Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant are no longer standing. What I photographed there has become a record of places that no longer exist in the same form. The buildings are gone, but their stories remain. That is ultimately what Abandoned Echoes of Tennessee is about.
Through photography and personal stories, the book captures the haunting beauty of these abandoned spaces while preserving something of the history they represent. Each location tells a different story, but together they form a larger story about Tennessee—and about what happens when time moves on and leaves places behind. These places may be abandoned, but they are not necessarily forgotten.
Abandoned Echoes of Tennessee arrives November 24, 2026, from Sutton Publishing’s America Through Time series.
Some places disappear. The echoes remain.
