March 31, 2021 proclaimed Mack Prichard Day  

 March 31, 2021 is designated as the Mack S. Prichard Day by Governor Bill Lee in appreciation and celebration of Prichard’s life in service.  Mack S. Prichard was the first Archaeologist and later Naturalist of the State of Tennessee.  He started working for the state at the age of 16 and kept his job for over 50 years, despite a turnover of eight governors.  His mission in life was to explore beautiful, pristine Tennessee properties, take slides, and then convince others that these properties were worth conserving.  Throughout his long and distinguished career, Mack crisscrossed Tennessee, doing slide shows at state park friends’ groups, Sierra Clubs, Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM),  Audubon meetings, schools, camps and garden clubs. 
  

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A FORCE FOR NATURE.

Welcome to MackPrichard.org, a home for some of the amazing collections of photos, videos and writings of Tennessee State Naturalist-emeritus Mack S. Prichard, a Memphis native who called the entire State of Tennessee his home (at least, the natural parts!).

Here, with Mack's blessing, the Friends of South Cumberland State Park, curators of this site, have scanned, archived and posted some of the thousands of slides, dozens of presentations and countless pages of Mack's writings and notes, recounting his more than six decades of service to the State of Tennessee, to Nature, and to like-minded environmentalists and conservationists across the planet.

Special thanks to the Tennessee Federation of Garden Clubs for its generous support of the Friends' work on the Mack Prichard Legacy Project.

A youthful Mack in action -- a self-portrait, taken with the timer on his camera. Said Mack, "I had to run like the devil to get into that shot, and at the moment the shutter clicked, I had no idea if I was even in the frame of the picture, or more importantly, whether I would complete that jump in one piece!" Happily, he made it -- and got a great photo, too!