Not Many People Know That Tennessee Has Its Own Replica Of The Famous Eiffel Tower
By Meghan Kraft|Published November 06, 2020
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Meghan Kraft
Author
Meghan Kraft loves to travel the world, but she makes her home right here in Nashville, Tennessee. She holds a degree in English, and has worked in the digital marketing realm with companies such as Apartments.com, USA Today and HarperCollins Publishing.
The Eiffel Tower, famed for its beauty and grandiosity, is most commonly considered in conversations about…France. Which makes a lot of sense. The idea of Tennessee creating an Eiffel Tower for itself? It sounds quirky, strange, and downright fascinating. But true. You can visit Tennessee’s replica of the Eiffel Tower for itself with a visit to Prais, Tennessee, and we’ve included the structure’s backstory below. Have fun exploring the Volunteer State, folks!
The small town of Paris, Tennessee can be found just 60 miles northeast of Jackson and 60 miles west of Clarksville in Henry County. The area is known for its historic downtown district as well as the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Center on Kentucky Lake.
Paris, Tennessee is perhaps best known for its small-town charm and as the location as the "World's Biggest Fish Fry." Henry County is also home to one of the largest medical communities on the west side of the state, and the Paris downtown district has been both renovated and maintained in earnest in recent years.
Of course, it's the Tennessee Eiffel Tower that tends to draw tourists from around the world. The model was built in the early 1990s and is an exact replica of the original in Paris, France.
Engineering students from Christian Brothers University first began construction on the tower in response to the 1990 Memphis in May festival. Every year the Tennessee festival honors a different country, and in 1990 France was chosen. The original replica was built out of wood and was meant to be a temporary structure.
In April 1991, the "Paris USA" event was created to celebrate every city in the United States named in honor of the Paris capital. Fun fact: there are 15 cities named "Paris" in the USA! The tower was designed to scale by a professor of civil engineering, and 10,000 hours of donated labor resulted in the Eiffel Tower folks now visit in Tennessee today.
The tower is made of 6,000 steel rods and 500 pieces of Douglas Fir. The finished product was delivered in pieces in February 1992 and painted before being reassembled in Memorial Park. It was later dedicated on January 29, 1993.
The Tennessee Eiffel Tower is consistently maintained and cared for to this day. You can visit for yourself at Memorial Park in the small Henry County town of Paris.
