Personal Enrichment
History Courses
Program Overview
Urban Hiking Tour of Knoxville includes four guided tours through Knoxville’s most fascinating areas, including a surprise destination during one session.
Each walk will last about two hours.
We’ll conduct the session rain or shine. (If the weather is really terrible, we’ll find a place inside to talk.)
Surprise destination during one session.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
We’ll visit the University of Tennessee campus, discover the sculpture and biography of National Cemetery and Old Gray Cemetery, and explore downtown Knoxville.
Program Course
Please click the course title below for details.
Note: 2025 courses will be available for registration in mid-November.
Student Testimonial
Through the Landscape & Garden Design Certificate, I was able to cultivate the skills and best techniques necessary to properly design and install my own landscape and hardscape concepts. Moreover, I acquired a much more expansive knowledge of local resources, including the instructor’s extensive proprietary plant selection list for our East Tennessee growing zones, which truly made my dream garden outstanding.
Mary Woody, Former Landscape and Design Certificate Student
Meet Your Instructor
Jack Neely
Jack Neely got his degree in American history at UT, but through other avenues has made a particular study of Knoxville. A former delivery-truck driver, during the 1982 World’s Fair he worked both as a Egyptian museum guide and crowd-control agent, and developed a broad perspective on that signal event. For two years after that, he was an investigator for one of Knoxville’s busiest criminal law firms, working on several high-profile cases. Then, as a journalist, working first for the local newspaper and later as an editor for Whittle Communications, the national magazine company, he helped newcomers make sense of his hometown while assigning and editing stories of international interest. He launched his “Secret History” column in the alt weekly Metro Pulse in 1992, and commenced a new career of studying Knoxville’s unique culture and digging up little-known but significant stories about the city’s often peculiar past.
He has produced nine books about Knoxville history, including Market Square: A History of the Most Democratic Place on Earth and The Tennessee Theatre: A Grand Entertainment Palace. He has won numerous awards for his writing work from the Society of Professional Journalists, the East Tennessee Historical Society, and UT Press.
He is currently executive director of the Knoxville History Project, an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and regularly leads tours and gives lectures about Knoxville and its history. He is also a contributing editor to the Knoxville Mercury, and author of the weekly column, “The Scruffy Citizen.” (As well as co-author of that weekly’s Knoxville-centric crossword puzzle, “Crooked Street Crossword”!)
Register Today
Learn Knoxville’s history around downtown!