Museum anvil shoots return July 3, 4
Visitors to the Museum of Appalachia on July 4, 2024, watch one of the Independence Day anvil shoots in a field behind the museum’s main building. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
It’s the first time in the event’s nearly 30-year history that the celebration will span two full days, featuring Revolutionary War living-history programming, historical interpretation, and traditional Appalachian demonstrations alongside the museum’s longtime anvil shoot tradition.
At the center of the celebration is the museum’s signature anvil shoot, a rare frontier tradition in which a blacksmith’s anvil is blown about 60 feet into the sky using gunpowder.
Once used by pioneers to celebrate holidays, elections, military victories, and other major occasions, anvil shooting has become one of the museum’s most anticipated annual traditions.
Anvil shoots are scheduled for 10 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, and 2 p.m. each day.
The expanded celebration will feature a Revolutionary War encampment, militia drills, and historical presentations from reenactors portraying figures such as John Sevier, Henry Knox, and David Hall.
Guests can experience colonial and pioneer life through demonstrations and hands-on activities including blacksmithing, basket making, broom making, leatherworking, quilting, rug hooking, coopering, wood carving, lye soap making, candle dipping, pioneer cooking, wash-tub canning, flintknapping, powder-horn demonstrations, storytelling, crosscut sawing, shape-note singing, sassafras tea demonstrations, and more.
Additional highlights will include a liberty pole raising, colonial seamstress demonstrations, live music, Southern food, a flag procession, and a national bell-ringing ceremony commemorating America’s 250th anniversary.
Advance tickets are now available at museumofappalachia.org and are discounted through June 22 as part of the museum’s early bird pricing promotion. The event is free for museum members.
This project is supported in part by the Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial, which gave the museum two “Tennessee America 250” grants totaling $29,500.
The museum said it plans to use the money for the Independence Day programming and to aid in preservation of its historic Cantilever Barn.
The Museum of Appalachia is a Smithsonian affiliate that helps to preserve and interpret the history and culture of Southern Appalachia through historic log structures, artifacts, and daily demonstrations of traditional skills and music.
