Falcon Rest is the Victorian mansion where history is fun.  Built in 1896 by Gorilla Pants manufacturer Clay Faulkner, the 10,000 sq-ft mansion and its five-acre gardens are open for guided tours 9 to 5 daily.  A Victorian Tea Room and Gift Shop in the mansion's Visitor Center give guests the opportunity to taste the flavor and take home a souvenir of the 1890s as well.  Rib-tickling entertainment shows with meals are offered for tour groups, and overnight accommodations are available on the grounds.  It is located halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga in McMinnville, Tenn.

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In 1896, entrepreneur Clay Faulkner told his wife Mary he’d build her “the grandest mansion in Tennessee” if she would move next to their woolen mill, 2-1/2 miles from downtown McMinnville.

Mary agreed, and Faulkner supervised construction as enthusiastically as he promoted the mill’s “Gorilla Pants” (so strong even a gorilla couldn’t tear them apart) and mineral water at the Faulkner Springs Hotel, the “ideal health and pleasure resort” he would eventually open on the lake across the road.

In the 1940s, Clay Faulkner’s mansion was converted into a hospital and nursing home. By the mid-1950’s, Dr. J.P. Dietrich had added onto the building and renamed it the Faulkner Springs Hospital. Local folks still tell fond stories about the doctor and the house where he dispensed medicine and love. The doctor closed the hospital in 1968. He stripped out much of the woodwork in an unsuccessful attempt to tear down the solid brick structure, then let it sit empty for a decade an a half.

When George McGlothin bought the old house at auction in 1989, it was a ghost of its former glory. He and his wife Charlien began four years of restoration, tackling 95 percent of the work themselves. Their efforts were rewarded with the National Trust’s Great American Home Award for restoration in 1997.

Today, the mansion is filled with majestic Victorian antiques.  Some say it is presided over by a friendly ghost -- perhaps the proud builder himself.