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Rhea County Courthouse
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The Rhea County Courthouse bell tower.
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| Location: | 1475 Market Street Dayton, Tennessee |
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| Area: | 3.7 acres (1.5 ha) |
| Built: | 1891; 1925[1] |
| Architect: | W. Chamberlin Dowling & Taylor |
| Architectural style: | Italian villa Romanesque |
| Governing body: | Local (County of Rhea) |
| NRHP Reference#: | 72001251 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP: | November 7, 1972[1] |
| Designated NHL: | December 8, 1976[2] |
The Rhea County Courthouse, located in Dayton, Tennessee was the scene of the Scopes Trial of July 1925, in which teacher John T. Scopes faced charges for including Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in his public school lesson. The trial became a clash of titans between the lawyers William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense, and epitomizes the tension between fundamentalism and modernism in a wide range of aspects of American society.
A $1-million project which restored the second-floor courtroom to the way it looked during the Scopes trial was completed in 1979. The Rhea County Museum, also called the Scopes Trial Museum, is located in its basement and contains such memorabilia as the microphone used to broadcast the trial, trial records, photographs, and an audiovisual history of the trial. Every July local people re-enact key moments of the trial in the courtroom.[3] In front of the courthouse stands a commemorative plaque erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission:
2B 23
THE SCOPES TRIALHere, from July 10 to 21, 1925 John
Thomas Scopes, a County High School
teacher, was tried for teaching that
a man descended from a lower order
of animals in violation of a lately
passed state law. William Jennings
Bryan assisted the prosecution;
Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield
Hays, and Dudley Field Malone the
defense. Scopes was convicted.
The Rhea County Courthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1976.[4] It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.[5][6]
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