The Grave of Mountain Tom Clark

Florence tells a grim story about a man named Mountain Tom Clark. During and after the Civil War, the tale goes, Clark led a gang of bushwhackers who terrorized the area and were said to have murdered more than a dozen people. Captured at last, he is supposed to have boasted that no one would ever run over Tom Clark.

In eighteen seventy-two an angry mob took matters into its own hands and lynched him. Then, in dark irony, they are said to have buried him beneath the roadway near the city cemetery, so that for generations travelers would roll right over his grave and prove his last boast wrong. Local historians caution that much of this is legend.

The exact truth of his crimes and the location of his body are disputed. But the story, true or not, has haunted Florence ever since.