There were two Dayton,
Tennessees in 1925. There was the prosperous and
quiet town in the Cumberland Mountains that was well-known to its 1,800
inhabitants. Then there was, for about two hot weeks in July, the
Dayton
whose streets were transformed into a fair of lemonade and hotdog
stands,
banners and monkey pennants, caged apes, hawkers of religious tracts
and
biology texts, Holy Rollers and evangelists, and hundreds of members of
the press.
Dayton was a town of beautiful homes, two banks, a hosiery
mill, a
canning
factory, and a blast furnace of the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company.
The
most notable structure on a main street of brick and wooden buildings
and
Model T Fords was the Hotel Aqua. Farmers in the surrounding fields of
Rhea County grew soybeans, wheat, tobacco, and strawberries.
The writer, H. L. Mencken, found Dayton to be a surprisingly pleasant
community.
He described a town "full of charm and even some beauty." Homes were
surrounded
by pretty gardens, with green lawns and stately trees. Mencken noted
that
Dayton's stores were well- stocked and had a "metropolitan air,
especially
the drug, book, magazine, sporting goods, and soda-water emporium of
the
estimable Robinson."
Dayton was, however, very much a Christian community, as attested to by
its nine churches. Mencken came to find the town suffocatingly moral.
He
complained that the town had no bootleggers, no gambling, no place to
dance,
and that "no fancy women" had been seen in Dayton "since the McKinley
Administration."
The "relatively wicked," according to Mencken, "when they would indulge
themselves, go to Robinson's drug store and debate theology." All this
strictly Christian behavior left Mencken longing for "a merry laugh, a
burst of happy music, the gurgle of a decent jug."
Daytonians viewed the Scopes trial as an opportunity to put their town
on the map. In preparation for the trial and the arriving hordes,
Dayton
businessmen printed a pamphlet "Why Dayton - Of All Places?,"
illustrated
with pictures of the town's places of commerce. Townspeople apparently
believed that settlers would be attracted to Dayton, in Mencken's
words,
"as to some refuge from the atheism of the great urban Sodom and
Gomorrahs."
Despite their religiosity and economic motivation for the trial, the
Darrows
found the locals a generally friendly lot. Mrs. Darrow observed that
"the
attitude of the townspeople toward us was especially kindly despite the
differences of our beliefs."
The Scopes trial took place in the Rhea County Courthouse, a large
brick
building with a belfry, surrounded by a large yard and trees. The
courthouse
yard was filled with vendors, banners, and preachers. As the trial
commenced,
the town "was literally drunk on religious excitement." There was
seating
in the courthouse for 700, but 300 more standees crammed in to watch
Dayton's
most historic event.
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